Particular Scandals [Hardcover]

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. The scandal of this collection is it sizzles with such life, such particularity, such fierce pain and love, that you may not be able to put it down. Chatting about the weather, reflecting on ill health, estimating our chances of happiness, recounting adventures of a Labrador retriever and the astonishment of the incarnation, Julie Moore sounds as close as a friend. And yes, she is as trustworthy. --Jeanne Murray Walker, author of New Tracks, Night Falling These are poems that span our daily lives and ask the hard metaphysical and theological questions living brings. . . . They are alert (without sentimentality or false transcendence) to the grace and beauty, both ordinary and commonplace, that open our hearts and mouths in hallelujah. I so admire these poems that quietly reflC-