Though outwardly successful, young Anne Christie's prominent midwestern coal-mining family is deeply troubled - Anne especially. While growing up during the late 1950s, Anne becomes convinced that her mother hates her. Emotionally isolated at home, she seeks love and approval in the arms of the many men who pursue her. As she embarks on a journey that will take her to New York in pursuit of a modeling career, Anne doesn't dream that one day her past will come back to haunt her.

When Anne meets and marries Billy Kane, a jazz musician with an explosive personality, her mother makes it known that she does not approve. Anne and Billy move to the suburbs with their young children, but when Anne discovers that there are other women in Billy's life, the marriage disintegrates. Seeking a new romantic attachment in 1970, Anne immerses herself in Manhattan's wild singles scene. After two years she tires of this lifestyle and comes home to her children and the young man she will eventually marry. But though Anne works hard to create a stable life for her family, her painful relationship with her mother keeps interfering.

As she attempts to unearth her true identity, Anne explores love, motherhood, and middle age and finds a new life at the center of a series of personal losses.

Though outwardly successful, young Anne Christie's prominent midwestern coal-mining family is deeply troubled - Anne especially. While growing up during the late 1950s, Anne becomes convinced that her mother hates her. Emotionally isolated at home, she seeks love and approval in the arms of the many men who pursue her. As she embarks on a journey that will take her to New York in pursuit of a modeling career, Anne doesn't dream that one day her past will come back to haunt her.

When Anne meets and marries Billy Kane, a jazz musician with an explosive personality, her mother makes it known that she does not approve. Anne and Billy move to the suburbs with their young children, but when Anne discovers that there are other women in Billy's life, the marriage disintegrates. Seeking a new romantic attachment in 1970, Anne immerses herself in Manhattan's wild singles scene. After two years she tires of this lifestyle and comes home to her children and the young man she will eventually marry. But though Anne works hard to create a stable life for her family, her painful relationship with her mother keeps interfering.

As she attempts to unearth her true identity, Anne explores love, motherhood, and middle age and finds a new life at the center of a series of personal losses.

The Nature of Beyond is a visual and textual foray by artist and writer exploring "the nature of beyond" and its varying degrees between dream and reality. Through juxtaposing artwork with poem, the journey begins with the simple haiku of a single bird singing and how his simple song affects the world and finishing with the essay of a mysterious package at the local post office emitting small chirps calling from beyond. It is the hope of the artist and the writer to guide your search through these pages to find your own personal nature of beyond. Wherever it leads and whatever the discovery, may you enjoy the journey.

Nancy Scott's voice is unique and unforgettable. In One Stands Guard, One Sleeps, we are allowed entry into the dramas of both ordinary and extraordinary lives, her work rendered in plain diction, infused with humor. These well-crafted, powerful and poignant poems flow beautifully and carry a punch. At work here is a sure hand, a caring heart, honesty.
Wanda Praisner, prize-winning author of On the Bittersweet Avenues of Pomona
In this volume Nancy Scott surveys her life with a loving, level gaze, speaking hard truths. Whether summoning immediate family members, lovers (actual and potential), businessmen, social service clients, or herself for review, she notes merits and flaws in just, sympathetic measure. Scott traces the signs of the times forwards and backwards, puzzling out the pattern in the drift.
James Fowler, editor of Slant, A Journal Of Poetry
Nancy Scott's poems show what life is really like. Whether they deal with her own life, close or casual acquaintances or her clients as a social worker, she confronts what she sees head-on, with uncompromising honesty. Her subject matter is the nature of life itself: relationships, innocence and its loss, the fallibility and vulnerability of being alive. The poems never fail to surprise, especially in their zinger endings, dry, wry, honest, and sometimes shocking.
Betty Lies, author of The Blue Laws

From the battles for civil rights and equal rights, to war and its aftermath, to the enduring tragedies of drugs, racism, poverty and disease that play out daily in American cities, to the interior dramas of her life, Nancy Scott opens our eyes through the compassionate lens of her poetry. With a deceptively stoical tone, Down to the Quick reveals a sharp-eyed poet's sensibility deftly applied to the social realities and cultural shocks of the second half of "the American century."
Sander Zulauf, Editor, Journal of New Jersey Poets

Nancy Scott's poems - always precise and polished - reflect her love for language that is alive and charged with meaning. Her work is guided by a moral vision that leads her to understand and empathize with people who are hurt, forgotten, and victimized. After reading her poems we come away with a greater awareness and understanding of our endless human connections.
Sam Longmire, Editor, Out of Line

Nancy Scott's Down to the Quick is a powerful collection of poems that evoke images of passion and loss, pain and joy, survival and death. Her book presents vivid, emotionally charged pictures of an era some forty years ago, as well as scenes from present life, dramatic moments made real and meaningful in her skillful conversion of plain-spoken language into wonderful poetry.
Poet Jean Hollander's most recent publication is a verse translation of Dante's Commedia published by Doubleday.