Scott Owens - Themes

Themes

Owens' poems treat a wide range of themes often expressed as dialectics, including faith and agnosticism, abuse and parenting, alienation and existentialism, loneliness and collaboration, entrapment and liberation, personal relationships and self-sufficiency, the disappearance of a rural American South characterized as both pastoral and violent, and the possibilities of redemption as his characters attempt to make sense of an often seemingly senseless world. His settings and imagery are familiar but often quirky, utilizing extended metaphors and juxtaposing the mundane with the transcendent in sometimes disturbing ways. His work is marked by diversity in tone, style and subject matter, at times nearly formal, at other times conversational and performance-based; at times political, at other times focused on nature; at times distraught about the state of humanity, but just as often optimistic and celebratory. He often re-envisions the lives of familiar historical and mythological characters and has created his own everyman figure named Norman. He cites deep imagism, confessionalism, and surrealism among his strongest influences. and lists Whitman, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Cummings, Plath, Sexton, Yannis Ritsos, Yehuda Amichai, CP Cavafy, George Seferis, Adrienne Rich, Galway Kinnell, and Tim Peeler as the poets who have had the greatest impact on his own work and thought.