Books by John Stanford Owen

Second Prayer creates gut-punch portraits of daydreaming laborers and drunken rages, skinny-dipping and scarecrows, suspected murders and specters who loiter on rooftops. While these narrative poems use unrelenting candor to unveil the crushing violence of poverty, the writer delivers verses with a musical language that balances both lyric and storytelling traditions. The contrasting collage creates a symphony of brutality and beauty, rhythm and ruckus, sadness and serenity. It reminds us that our messiest moments are also our most human.