Scott Owens Poetry

In TO, Scott Owens illustrates the joy, frustration, and oxymoronic nature of writing poetry. Only someone who is deeply committed to and believes in the art and craft of poetry could compile such a compelling collection of ars poetica. In fact, the titles alone compel: ‘The Sun Was Like an Oxymoron,’ ‘Arse Poetica,’ ‘On the…

The poetry of Scott Owens traces the contours of loss and hope, possibility and renewal. A determination to speak honestly and courageously of important personal matters, pervades this book and gives it emotional urgency page after page. Owens embodies Cocteau’s definition of tact–“knowing how far to go in going too far”–while striking a similar balance…

Shadows Trail Them Home is a compelling novel in poetry, an important contribution to the cultural canon of American life, presented in an engaging but disturbing context. “Scott Owens and Priscilla Campbell create characters by reading our souls, create scenes by framing the pictures that live in our memories, too raw to remember, too vivid…

Scott Owens describes his new volume of poetry: I grew up in two worlds: my father’s parents’ world of brick homes, city streets, shopping, and playgrounds; and my mother’s parents’ world of dirt roads, livestock, growing our own food, and endless woods. That second world was undeniably harder than the first. The work was dirtier,…

Nothing can be as rewarding as getting lost driving down a country road. You never know what you might encounter: an aging barn, a church whose steeple peaks out of a mountain top, a barred up general store, or an old automobile that has seen better days. I have often found that if I don’t…

“Why ask where none can answer?” Scott Owens’ collection, Something Knows the Moment, poses this question and accompanies it with a hundred others about the nature of God, the nature of faith, of doubt, of trust and distrust, disillusion and resignation. Occasionally the subject of hope is addressed: “Here at least there is ice cream…

When Scott Owens pitched The Nature of Attraction to me, he presented me with a dilemma. The Author’s Select Chapbook Series was designed to have authors for whom Main Street Rag had already published books recommend other authors who would be new to Main Street Rag. The dilemma was that Scott is also a contributor…

Poems of aching tenderness. Paternity explores with a discerning, clear-eyed sensitivity the daily small delights, frustrations, and purely unexpected miracles that, taken together, make up the building blocks of one father’s personal salvation.” —Joanna Catherine Scott, author of Night Huntress and Fainting at the Uffizi “In Scott Owens’ lovely book of poems, PATERNITY, we have…

The Fractured World is a courageous examination of the long term effects of child abuse in our society. Owens’ poems are at times heartbreaking, at times humorous, yet always triumphant.–Tim Peeler Scott Owens’ poems grab the reader by the throat from the opening line and don’t let go, unspooling down the page with verve and…