Stegosaurus Moon - by Scott Beal (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Stegosaurus Moon explores heartbreak, divorce, parenthood and the discovery of new, often unexpected, ways forward. Poem by poem, the speakers puzzle through how one love comes apart and how a new life comes together in its wake.

Through encounters with everything from dinosaurs and scorpionflies, Britney Spears and the Rock, birthdays, deaths, pets, teenagers, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Rupaul's Drag Race, the sequence builds into an examination of how the language of queer identity can be weaponized or can open space for more expansive ways to live and love. A tender accounting of the poet peering into a mirror that morphs and warps with language that consistently astounds, these pieces walk in step with the work of Ross Gay, Jeffrey McDaniel, Denise Duhamel, and Jennifer L. Knox.

Review Quotes

"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