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PRAISE FOR STEGOSAURUS MOON
"Scott Beal’s Stegosaurus Moon teaches me to trust in imagination—to all the unfurling possibilities of selfhood. This book shimmers with constant acts of becoming: amidst “flowers emit[ting] electrical fields,” gray hair cinched to pigtails, acts of naming and releasing, birthdays, death days, presence, absence, and the deep heart of parenthood, Beal’s poems bloom and reverberate with tenderness. In these poems, imagination is not without grief and loss, yet also remains textured by open-hearted attention, quiver-ripe with wonder. These poems make a self possible, and such possibility is transformative. I love this book. "—Carlina Duan, author of Alien Miss
“Beautifully crafted, emotionally complex, these poems are rooted in ruptures and thresholds. A divorce wounds the speaker but separation also spurs wonder. Fatherhood and new love are sites of tenderness and change. The reckonings are underscored by remarkable language and a dazzling imagination. Scott Beal is a poet whose work is new to me—I’m so thankful to have discovered his astonishing poems.” —Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine
“I know how punishing love can be” Scott Beal writes, and this big-hearted collection feels like the journey that comes after that punishment. A journey that reaches for meaning through Ghost Rider comics, monologues delivered to weary toll booth operators, fatherhood, epistles to melting ice caps and whatever else the world has to offer. The poems in Stegosaurus Moon burn with an earned wisdom and are charming, crushing, and alive.”—Matthew Olzmann, author of Constellation Route
“Chronicling the grief, fury, and absurdities of life after divorce, Stegosaurus Moon delivers astonishing inversions of sense and absence. Scott Beal’s poems are as earnest and raw as they are precise and original. The result isn’t so much “emotion recollected in tranquility” as it is emotion recollected in a wind tunnel. I'm floored by the roar of language and image here, and I am wildly grateful for this canny, deliberate, and aching poet.”
—Jaswinder Bolina, author of English as a Second Language and Other Poems
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Beal is the author of Wait 'Til You Have Real Problems (Dzanc Books, 2014) as well as the chapbook The Octopus (Gertrude Press, 2016). He directs the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts program at the University of Michigan and teaches in the Sweetland Center for Writing. He co-hosts the Skazat! monthly online poetry series and co-edits Public School Poetry.
