MIANUS VILLAGE

A baby boomer’s poetic retrospective on life and family.

Scully’s free-verse poetry collection begins with a poem (“Entries in a Family Bible”) that details how, in 1847, the author’s great-great-grandfather, Patrick Doran, arrived in Greenwich, Connecticut, at age 18. He found employment at a horse stable, which he later purchased; that land remained in the family for 100 years. World War II ended “just in time” to save the author’s father from battle, after which he “became obsessed” with finding a job, owning a Studebaker, and starting a family with his wife (“Coming Home”). The titular poem finds the author, as a 2-year-old, moving with his family to a Veterans Administration Housing Project for returning GIs. Scully’s mother factors heavily into these poems; other childhood memories tell of contending with a bully, suffering a broken arm, the joy of a tire swing, and a summer ritual of an ice cream truck. Scully revisits his early employment, including buying a paper route from another boy and mowing the lawn for a woman who “old and living / alone on memories / and TV dinners” (“Widow Donahue”). He reminisces about the first stirrings of desire for a classmate and the origins of his poetry appreciation; he concludes with one of his happiest family memories, a summer picnic, in “Tod’s Point.” Scully’s writing vividly captures all five senses, such as how his mother planted purple iris “whose iridescent petals / brightened our days / and the kitchen table / every summer” (“Mianus Village”). He describes sitting “quiet as a cat, / my eyes and ears—antennas / of surprise and wonder” while listening to his mother commiserate with other “war brides” in poem of the same name, and how, “In late summer, / the sunny slope / above the river / turned into a prickly oasis / of fat, spongy blackberries” (“Poison Ivy”). In the end, however, Scully’s work is uncomplicated free verse, and its material might have been better served by a memoir.

An occasionally evocative, if simple, boyhood remembrance steeped in nostalgia.