Particular Scandals A Book Of Poems

Broad in scope–theological, ecological, and personal–and acutely particular in details–witnessed and lived–the affecting poems in Particular Scandals explore how one endures suffering, avoiding the cliches of both bitterness and transcendence. Thus, while Moore’s poetry depicts the debilitating ruin illness wreaks, it also embraces the beauty and mystery in creation, in faith, even in tribulation itself. At the book’s core is pure paradox and insightful integration, wedding Christmas–Christ’s incarnation and eventual, willing sacrifice–to pain and grief. Thus, on the heels of Moore’s multiple surgeries and amid her husband’s serious heart problem–both while in their forties–come ”flashes of hallelujah” and songs knit with Amens ”un- / broken, like a world without end.” Empathetic and observant, Moore’s evocative poems also turn their attention to friends’ and other family members’ appalling losses: a stillborn infant, suicidal adolescents, molested, and trafficked children. All in all, the book portrays how Moore survives like the Sycamore tree in one of her poems, ”scabbed and scarred from moments like this,” offering her ”empty self / like a cup to the Lord of the storm.”