Poems Breaking Silence Fifty Years After Sexual Abuse at Church
Betrayed by a trusted adult, an isolated boy holds his Argos close and whispers the truth into that floppy hound’s ear. Let Other Hounds is a debut collection mapping the journey of that shamed boy of ten as he moves courageously through a decade of terror toward freedom. Scott LaMascus breaks silence as an accomplished husband and father who has learned much about the aftermath of boyhood sexual abuse. After fifty years, it is a courageous and stunning gathering of words held close and distilled into poems which speak difficult truths still feared, denied, and often faced with ambivalence or even recriminations. The poems are driven by force of shattered boyhood-profound sadness, burning anger, isolation and much darkness.
Yet the poet fearlessly dives down to that wreck, seeking language and metaphor to brave the perilous ascent back to the sparkling surface of life-toward healing, joy, love and boldness. The poems surprise again and again, but remain grounded in specific place, time, family, and canine companionship. The poems move readers through an experience like that of as many as one in six men in the U.S. Along this arduous path lie toxic masculinity, challenges of agency, the heroism of individual and collective action, the imposters of regret and anger, and the search for solidarity and respect for others who delay telling their stories not just to survive, but to thrive.
Lyrical, searing, obsessive, and poignant. The speaker in these poems grapples with childhood sexual abuse and the endless aftermath of memory, silence, and ultimately agency.
Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the World and director of Poetry@Tech, Georgia Tech University
Scott LaMascus’s Let Other Hounds is a lyrical testament to resilience. These poems, written half a century after the boyhood sexual abuse he suffered, chronicle the long and unrelenting struggle to emerge from debilitating shame, as well as the love and honesty, both offered and received, that makes healing possible. Several poems here nearly stopped my heart with their courage, among them the brief, stunning masterpiece “Poems Pretty as a Picture.” What a gift we are offered by this poet-not mere sweetness or sorrow-but a clarity that is somehow sad and radiant at once.
Richard Hoffman, author of People Once Real and Love & Fury and Emeritus Writer in Residence, Emerson College
Let Other Hounds begins with an epigraph from Adrienne Rich, “Here in the matrix of need and anger… / tell it over and over.” And that is exactly what Scott LaMascus does in these courageous, beautifully crafted poems which look unflinchingly at sexual abuse and the suffering that lasts for so many long years and also chronicle the healing that makes room for joy. After dismissing the too-easy consolations attributed to Rumi-“The wound is where the light gets in”-Scott LaMascus goes on to say, “I seek a God who knows even the bruises / swallow all light and who folds me in this dark.” This is a brave and necessary book.
Ellen Bass, author of Indigo and The Mules of Love, co-author of The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Scott LaMascus illuminates the deeply solitary journey of boys who have survived childhood sexual abuse. With raw honesty he lays bare the “absence of light,” the power of “presence and silence,” and the steady healing brought by love. Above all, these poems reveal the unfolding resilience of the author’s soul and, in so doing, remind us all of the courage within. These pages offer a hand to every survivor-and those that love them-urging them to keep blooming and to marvel at the beauty of becoming.
Steven Hardebeck II, M.A., LPC
These convicting and heartbreaking poems enlighten and heal as they open readers’ hearts to feel with the victim as he searches himself and regains himself in the long aftermath of childhood sexual abuse. Some will make you sad, some will make you mad, and a few will surprise you with smiles or a deep call out for self and others who have likewise suffered. The poet’s pain and relentless quest for God leave me astonished that anyone could forgive rather than damn, but real loves are this poet’s powerful tonic for himself and for others.
Lynn McMillon, Ph.D. and long-time LPC and LMFT at Oklahoma Christian University, Distinguished Professor of Bible Emeritus; past president and CEO of The Christian Chronicle
Across this collection of autobiographical word-portraits, Scott’s metaphors dip into complexity and intensity as he processes the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. Along the same journey, they rest and cling to his reference points of safety: his wife, children, canine companions, and deeply known geography. As a trauma therapist and researcher of metaphor and meaning, I applaud the willingness to open the reader to his experience of wrestling and restoration-and am once again grateful for voices like his who may someday eradicate the hell of decimated childhoods.
Kelly M Roberts, Ph.D., LMFT
Scott LaMascus
is a writer in Oklahoma City whose 2024 MFA is from Antioch University, Los Angeles. His debut collection, Let Other Hounds, was long-listed for the 2024 Idaho Prize for Poetry.
His chapbook, The Edited Tongue: A Family’s Year with ALS, has become a resource for the rare disease community, recognized by Rare Revolution magazine in the United Kingdom and adopted for ALS Awareness Month by Mercy Healthcare and the Meinders NeuroScience Institute, Oklahoma City. His poetry has appeared in Bracken, Altadena Review, Red Ogre Review, Pennine Platform, and others. He is director of the McBride Center for Public Humanities at Oklahoma Christian University and serves as a board member of the Federation of States Humanities Councils.