Scott Owens Poetry

Jane Hirshfeld

  • Former NC Poet Laureate Kay Byer Endorses Eye of the Beholder

    Here is what former NC Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer says about Eye of the Beholder:

    “The eye in Scott Owens’ “Eye of the Beholder” is the passionate “I” of the poet, watching every turn and gesture of the beloved and speaking from it, sounding the lineaments of desire in each poem and pulling the reader into its embrace. Over the years, Owens has ranged widely in subject matter and style. This is his most intimate book yet, his voice tender, full of longing and anticipation. He beholds what he loves, whether woman, blossom, or falling leaf, all of it gathered up in the world’s body, the ultimate beloved, after all, that he renders in finely tuned lyrics.”

    This is one of those wonderfully gratifying moments a writer can only hope happens: when a poet whom you admire almost beyond words endorses your own work with a perceptive and intelligent evaluation. One of my goals as a writer has been to avoid limiting myself in regards to subject matter or “voice,” and I am thrilled that Kay comments on that very element in my writing. I am also thrilled that what I hoped would be the underlying feeling of the book is as it reflects how I feel about the world is perceived and stated so clearly in Kay’s words.

    If you haven’t already ordered a copy, you can still get the pre-publication discount by ordering with PayPal at http://mainstreetrag.com/bookstore/product/eye-of-the-beholder/, but since the release date has been moved up to mid-October, it won’t be available at that rate much longer. Please give it a shot. For $9 how could you go wrong?

    Cover

  • It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This

    When I hear good news about one of the poets I admire, I’m always excited to share it.

    And when I read intelligent commentary on the state of poetry today, I’m also excited to share it.

    Hickory’s own, and truly one of my mentors in poetry, Tim Peeler, was recently invited to read his work at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. As a lifetime fan and historian of baseball on every level, Tim was of course, thrilled to accept.

    Now the gentleman who invited him, George Mitrovich, has published an article about Tim, along with three excerpts from his poetry, in The Huffington Post. In the article, Mitrovich correctly assesses the wonderful quality of Tim’s work and also correctly comments on the relative and unfortunate obscurity in which most poets, even fantastic, inspiring ones like Tim Peeler, labor.

    Mitrovich says, “The literati among us are reasonably knowledgeable about poetry and poets, but even at that there are thousands of poets whose works we have no knowledge of – poets perhaps like Tim Peeler.

    It’s a damn shame.”

    The rest of the article is just as engaging, and just as spot on. You can read it here.

  • Sandra Beasley Endorsement of “Eye of the Beholder”

    Here is what award-winning poet and teacher, Sandra Beasley, said of Eye of the Beholder:

    In EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, Scott Owens explores the shaping of partnership, singing the body in all its passioned curvatures. Absence proves as intoxicating as presence; in one standout sequence, “This moon knows how I feel, / to be held apart from its sun.” Yet there is a grounding vernacular–rose petals fashioned into a sandwich, beans pickled for the jar, a bed whose headboard and frame resist alignment–that keeps one foot, pleasingly, in the everyday. Owens’ warm, sensual images are in the tradition of Pablo Neruda, Marc Chagall, and other artists of “this coupling, / this circumstance we call love.” This is a heartfelt, bold, and energizing read.
    ~Sandra Beasley, author of I Was the Jukebox

    I love that both she and Philip Dacey (read his endorsement here) see Neruda’s influence in the book.

    The book is still available for a limited time pre-publication discount at Main Street Rag (click link), but thanks to the number of pre-orders, the release date has been moved up to mid-October, so the discount won’t be available for much longer. In other words, order yours now.

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  • Getting Poetry to the People

    I have posted a new essay on my blog this morning at www.scottowensmuings.com. It’s all about what I do to “get poetry to the people” and touches on local efforts like Poetry Hickory, Writer’s Night Out, The Art of Poetry at the Hickory Museum of Art, and the “Musings” column as well as larger things like Wild Goose Poetry Review and the North Carolina Poetry Society. I am archiving a link to the essay here under the “Essays” tab. Thanks for taking a look.

  • New Issue of Wild Goose Poetry Review

    The new issue of Wild Goose Poetry Review just went live with outstanding work by Tim Peeler, Phebe Davidson, Al Ortolani, Larry Schug, Jim Zola, Karen Douglass, and many more.

    There is a strong Hickory, NC, contingent in this issue, including not only Peeler but also Monday Night Writers Kelly DeMaegd, Akacia Robinson, Patricia Deaton, Brenda Smith, Mel Hager, and Betty O’Hearn.

    There is also a strong NC NetWest contingent with Glenda Beall, Maren Mitchell, Lucy Cole Gratton, Staci Bell, and former member, Barbara Gabriel.

    And there are reviews of wonderful new books by Michael Diebert, Collin Kelley, Hilda Downer, Malaika King Albrecht, Carol Matos, Robert S. King, Maren O. Mitchell, Jo Barbara Taylor, and Carole Richard Thompson.

    Help spread the news by posting links and sending emails to anyone you think would or should be interested.

  • “Eye of the Beholder” Discount

    Time to re-post this as it has fallen off the front page of my website. The discount is still valid.

    My new book of poems, Eye of the Beholder, is now available for pre-order through Main Street Rag’s new online bookstore. Here is a link that will take you to their listing for the book where you can see the cover art (by Valerie MacEwan), read a few poems from the book and place your order at a $5 discount off the cover price: Eye of the Beholder.

    Cover

    These are poems mostly about love. I wouldn’t call them all love poems, but they are about love in some fashion or another. The book is slated for release in January. Of course I have to sell enough pre-publication copies by then for MSR to move forward, and if I sell enough sooner, then it will get pushed up in the publication queue. So, help me out by ordering a copy now. I will be doing a number of readings starting in February and will be glad to sign previously bought copies then.

    Here is what Philip Dacey says about the book: The poetry of Scott Owens traces the contours of loss and hope, possibility and renewal. A heartfelt quality or soulfulness, best defined as the determination to speak honestly and courageously of important personal matters, pervades this book and gives it emotional urgency page after page. Drawn to what he calls “a poetics of excess,” Owens nevertheless embodies Cocteau’s definition of tact–“knowing how far to go in going too far”–while striking a similar balance between long poems and haiku-like or koan-like short ones, which provide a kind of seasoning for the feast of the whole. Especially notable at the book’s center is a love poem Neruda would have been happy to write, the laser-intense “You in the Tomb of My Eyes,” a paean to the night that anchors the surrounding testimonies to a life lived passionately and thoughtfully. Owens knows poetry is a serious business; while various other poets these days might seem caught up in gamesmanship, this poet plays for keeps.
    –Philip Dacey, Editor of Strong Measures

    Mostly, I hope you’ll take a look at the website, read the sample poems, and enjoy them enough that you want to read more.

  • 2 Poems in Luciole Retro

    Another of my favorite online journals is Luciole Press. Editor, Karen Bowles, published poems of mine in 2008 and 2010 before having to cut back on her work for a while to deal with some personal health issues. She recently started up again with a retro issue that includes two of my poems from 2008, “13 Ways of Birds” and “To Resist Fading.” The retro issue also has work from Pris Campbell, Ami Kaye, S.A. Griffin, Scott Wannberg, and Russell Ragsdale. Here is a link to Luciole Press

  • Cover Art

    Now that my son has managed to change the banner on this website, it seems appropriate to give a shout out to those who created the cover art for the books you see. The covers of three of the titles in the banner were from photos by my friend and Catawba Valley Community College colleague, Clayton Joe Young. The photographs on Paternity, Something Knows the Moment, and For One Who Knows How to Own Land were all taken by Joe. You can see more of his work, including the photographs from our collaboration, Country Roads on his website. The photos from our collaboration have been on exhibit in the Bethlehem Library, the Burke County Arts Center, and at CVCC, and we will be on exhibit later this fall in the Caldwell County Arts Center. They will host a reception including a reading from the poems on November 1.

    The cover for Eye of the Beholder was created by Valerie Macewan, editor of Dead Mule. It is a photo of one of her multi-media, found art creations. She calls herself an assemblagist, defined as “one who pro­vides the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of dis­placed ephemera and found objects by allow­ing for the move­ment of spa­tial and uni­ver­sal con­cepts via place­ment, thus cre­at­ing the intent of objects pre­vi­ously lim­ited only by the influ­ence of space and time.” She says, “Assem­blage Art re-​purposes man’s ephemeral detri­tus and gives it new life.” Some of her work can be seen on her blog.

    The other cover in the banner, The Fractured World is a photo I took of my front walk and M. Scott Douglass digitally enhanced by adding a grainier texture to what was a smooth, albeit cracked, walkway. Douglass, in fact, did the cover layout for all of the Main Street Rag books. Diane Kistner did the layout and tweaked the color for For One Who Knows How to Own Land.

    Of the covers not in the banner, Country Roads is, of course, a photo by Clayton Joe Young; The Nature of Attraction is a charcoal and oil sketch by Antoine de Villiers at antoineart.com; Shadows Trail Them Home is a photo by Pris Campbell’s friend, Shae Leighland-Pence at shaeleighland.com; and The Persistence of Faith is a photo taken by publisher, Ahsen Jillani of his wife Lisa’s shadow on my driveway when I lived in Charlotte.

  • To Be Like Poems

    Here is a poem that was published in another of my favorite online places, Vox Poetica, back in 2011. It was a little different then. Here is the link to its appearance in Annmarie Lockhart’s lovely daily poem blog.

    To Be Like Poems

    There is something about the way
    a poem sits on a page surrounded
    by so much white space, the stanzas boldly
    declaring their independence, the lines,

    rarely reaching the margin, yet
    taking themselves so seriously,
    believing they deserve to be broken,
    set apart, spoken in single,

    emphatic expulsions of breath, the words
    carefully chosen for sound, denotation,
    connotation, association, intentionally placed,
    measured, juxtaposed, the crisp

    black curls and lines of letters
    staunchly denying the oppression of the void,
    crush of prose, even a title
    given to somewhere between 5 words,

    the shortest decent poem I’ve ever
    read, and a couple hundred,
    sometimes even a byline for what
    might only be a single sentence

    that makes me think there might be hope
    for us all if we could learn to be
    like poems, vital, connected, leaning
    into the moment a little harder.

  • More About “Pirene’s Fountain”

    Yesterday I posted a few links to poems of mine and interviews of me that have been in the wonderful online journal Pirene’s Fountain over the last few years. I mentioned that their next issue, due out in October, will be their last online issue. Two of my poems and a review of my upcoming book, Eye of the Beholder will be included. I should clarify that they are not “going out of business.” They are converting to a print journal and creating a print press called Glass Lyre. They are, in fact, also considering ways in which to maintain an online presence as well.

    One of their first publications as Glass Lyre will be an anthology of the best poems published in Pirene’s Fountain. This will be an impressive anthology. The title will be First Water, and I feel honored to have four of my poems included with work by Kim Addonizio, Malaika King Albrecht, David Caddy, Jane Hirshfeld, Paul Hostovsky, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, Linda Pastan, Jane Yolen, and many, many more. In fact, it will run about 170 pages in all.

    Here is a link to Glass Lyre’s website, one definitely worth bookmarking and keeping an eye on.