New Moon by Half: A Lifetime in Poetry

By Scott Oury

Drawn from material written over five decades this book brings together a remarkable body of work, a lifetime in poetry.

Within these pages Scott Oury explores with honesty moments easily overlooked, and those difficult to ignore: family, love, the human connection with the natural world and beyond, an unoccupied space, a chance meeting in an airport, a forgotten wristwatch—and other instances of unexpected beauty. In the words of the author, “All of it, and much more—whatever captured my eye, or ear, and stirred feeling—got put into words.”

Evocative, lyric and intimate, these poems celebrate the grace found in the mundane, the painful, and the overlooked, forging a new way of seeing for both writer and reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Oury
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9780692152669

Scott Oury

A retired English teacher and former textbook editor, Scott Oury was raised on an Illinois farm and has been writing poetry for over five decades. In addition to poems his works have included essays, occasional pieces and articles which have appeared in a variety of diverse publications such as Law & Order Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, HIS Magazine, and the lead essay in "The Longing for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C. S. Lewis," a book celebrating the influential British writer. He holds an M.A. in English from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, and taught creative writing, composition, drama and poetry for over 30 years at academic institutions including Triton College, Columbia College Chicago and Mt. Holyoke College. Available on Amazon, Oury’s previous book "Coming to Terms with Experience through Writing" is a guide to experiential writing for both aspiring and professional writers. He currently lives and writes in Tesuque, New Mexico. Follow him on Instagram: @Scott.Oury.Poetry

Book preview

PREFACE

Thinking about writing a few Autobiographical Notes, I happened to pull off the bookshelf Riders on the Earth, by Archibald MacLeish. I found autobiographical information and a lead.

Macleish asks himself when his commitment to poetry began, and leads us through an imagined conversation in which he answers an undergraduate’s numerous questions about becoming a writer.

"Becoming a writer?" Macleish writes that Hemmingway left journalism because he was a writer. Macleish left a high-paying career in law, and took his family to Paris because of a persistent feeling that he owed something to Art.

By early college days I knew that I could write, was writing, but mostly occasional writings: for the college literary magazine an account of a solo boat trip down the Liard River, Northwest Territories; a dramatic piece for Parents Day at Wheaton College; the leading essay for a Festschrift celebrating C. S. Lewis; lots of etceteras, and some poems.

But then, taking a literature course at Drew University, I studied Wordsworth, John Donne, George Herbert, and other poets. Oh, I thought, this is poetry.

And then, late 60s, the English Department where I was teaching gathered on a weekend for one of those 60s events designed to give feelings some rein, in my case from the religious constraints with which I was raised.

I returned home and within hours wrote Name; and in the months and years that have followed a raft of poems, more than a few owing their existence to feelings given rein that weekend.

• • •

The poems you will read here come from the centuries-old character of poetry, poetry made from talk, the language of community.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first attempt at publishing: I sent First Born Prodigal to Marcia Lee Masters (daughter of poet Edgar Lee Masters), editor of a Today’s Poets column in the Chicago Tribune. She accepted. I said to Mack Stahl, a friend and fellow college teacher, I’m published to millions. He said, Here’s how it goes: You read a poem to Martie, she says, ‘I like it’—that’s it.

A list follows: friends, who have liked poems I’ve shared, and encouraged the writing of poems.

Mack Stahl; Diane Anderson, former student; Diane and Dick Rosewall—Diane, who devoured new sends and Dick, who said early on, Forget your textbook! Write (and publish) poetry; that’s an order; Sally Kitt Chappell and Walter Kitt, who gave loads of encouragement with insightful edits; Gladys Elliot, who kept the poems on her bedside table; Pete Jacobs; Martie Oury, for encouragement and edits of early poems; David Lindberg, Professor, University of Wisconsin, who treasured early poems; Clyde Kilby, professor of literature at Wheaton College, who launched me seriously into writing.

Recently, I have posted a poem a week to Friends on Facebook. Some have been actual friends and relatives; others, Facebook friends, the list growing by the week. From both categories I have received Likes, and some short notes, personal and genuine (a hoped-for, but unexpected, pleasant surprise).

FLESH AND BLOOD

Song for My Beginnings

Geneva Community Hospital.

They have lost my birth certificate

and the sign says, This Door Is Closed.

But I know it was here

in this steep-roofed, limestone mansion

shot with granite boulders

and slashed with a giant, tubular fire escape;

here behind the three, pointed gables

and windows offering row

on row of potted plants—I began.

Down the fire escape

she shot me into the middle of June.

They bundled me off over the green lawn

under the Burr Oaks and birdsong,

and over the river east in a

two-tone, tan Chevrolet.

There were just three of us then,

three for summer and sun,

two for prairie paths on Sunday mornings,

and one, mother says, walking first

with his hands reaching high for hold,

as if he reached for stars.

Mother of Eight

"You her favorite?—

she told you?"

Each child in us, unguarded,

opens a disbelieving face.

We are shocked only a moment.

We joke,

but each sends inarticulate questions

into that fragile world

where mother brooded

over only one.

Green Thumbs

Surprised?

As we two sit at breakfast

one day before mother’s day—yes

surprised that your "variegated...

variegated (something) plants"

climbing along railroad ties towards each other

from opposite sides of the room

(these nameless with heart-shaped leaves)

have turned up their noses with a sneer

and slipped back home.

Without a slip of comprehension

you recite this litany

to each of us as we visit—surprised,

but delighted, too, in their mutual dislike;

They know what they’re doing, you say.

Down the timbered room, two by two,

I see you’ve trained them all,

all your philodendron the same—

Bless us.

Bless us all in search

of the ties that bind.

Lyric Pieces (for Mother)

"I’ll see you in heaven,

if not before," you said,

after perhaps the last kiss.

But heaven was

every time you touched the keys,

every time you trumped

the gilded morning with melody,

or trounced the storm

with the rolling thunder

of The Ninety and Nine,

or played—at ninety—nonstop

for an hour and more

in triumph at the old folks home

you left two years before.

Heaven—even when you could not hold

your head above the keys,

and strained to catch the fleeting melody—

the lyric touch, the touch, the touch

I sit listening