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The Scarecrow of My Former Self
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 6, 2026
This Review first appeared at The Seattle Star:
I Read this Poetry Collection: The Scarecrow of My Former Self by Sarah Stockton and Hope You Read It Too
by Pamela Hobart Carter
The poems of this poet’s first full length collection address corporeal affliction and the changes that befall the mind and soul of that body’s inhabitant. Sarah Stockton is Founder/Editor-in-Chief of River Mouth Review and author of two chapbooks and an upcoming third. She also writes nonfiction, much on spiritual practice and direction. For more than two decades she has lived with myalgic encephalomyelitis, a condition she describes in metaphor and effect, even naming metaphor, and by inferential extension, penning poems, the creation of a lulling rhythm, the shaping of language into story—here, almost into lullaby—as a coping strategy for pain:
“From Metaphors Attempted in Conversation with My Doctor” (p.9):
~If the heart is
the center of the trunk of a tree
then my body
is a carved and weathered cedar boat
rocking in the wind’s wake
rocking
I rock myself to sleep
Stockton divides the book of fifty-four poems into three roughly equal sections, “Skeptics and Healers,” “Castoffs and Connections,” and “Solitude and Grace,” with a haiku to introduce each.
The poet sent me The Scarecrow of My Former Self in exchange for my poetry collection, (as set up by Lana Hechtman Ayers, manager of MoonPath Press, Concrete Wolf, and World Enough Writers). As a kind of thank you note, I wanted to post my gratitude on Facebook, so I thought I’d dip into the poems to be able to say something not generic. I began with the final poem, the titular poem. Then I read nine more, turning pages toward the front of the book. Forcing myself to stop, I set the book aside and wrote my “it’s here” message knowing that otherwise I wouldn’t get that task done for hours or days. The story of the poet trying to understand her body and its behaviors (beyond her control and choice) was riveting.
The Scarecrow of My Former Self is attractive to look at and touch, with a cover of a bare tree, crows on the highest branches, as a gray silhouette on white, the title in large black letters over the image and the MoonPath Press color band along the bottom in ochre, an ochre with more green for the back cover and spine. MoonPath Press books are all handsome and feel nice. They are perfect bound. The blurbs from Jeannine Hall Gailey and Jill Khoury emphasize how this poetry delivers grace, hope, and reclamation as it declares realities of living with a chronic illness. When I picked up the book next, I wondered if all the poems dwelt in the realm of illness?
Yes, AND—
In “Studying the Vagus: Footnotes,” (p.11), a prose poem in numbered list form, I admired the zing and humor of “5. Correction by Editor: any comparison of a body/with a sea floor is a misrepresentation/of the biological facts./ One cannot stowaway in one’s own body.”
Good poems employ metaphor. Metaphor, by definition, yokes things. So, here is the sea floor spreading its depth and breadth across the pages of a collection focused on myalgic encephalomyelitis. Of course, Stockton hinges her work on a variety of metaphors that weave their variety into the imagery.
Not only by metaphor do other concerns appear in this book. There are a few poems that stand a short distance from the central theme such as “So Far Away” (p. 44), which yearns for her daughter. Through them all I learned a lot about this illness about which I knew next to nothing. Stockton has helped me better understand pain. For example, “Brain Fog Fragment” heartbreakingly lies double-spaced and nearly punctuation-free on page 18. The gaps and the line breaks between words and phrases promote a sense of things in pieces, a coming apart, as with the thought process in a brain fog. The reader gets a hint of the experience of the fog. I see definitive diction and formal structures as some of Stockton’s parries with the barrage of challenges hurled at her by a debilitating and mysterious medical condition. She faces a futility with candor, intelligence, and humor.
Many of her poems are familiar forms: haiku, sonnet, pantoum, abecedarian, epistolary, list, dialog, (or less familiar) antiphon. There are couplet-ed poems, left-justified blocks of text, tercets, double-spaced lines, semi-concrete shapes. There is a smidge of rhyme. Then there’s the shape of the whole book, from one version of the scarecrow to another, the hopeful initial scarecrow creation of “Survival Plan” (p.7) to the dancing entity of “The Scarecrow of My Former Self” (p. 69), weathering wild storms.
While the poet mourns in “Chronic,” p.20, “I surrender what I never grasped. Nothing sexy about/chronic pain, nothing funny—//not a good story.” Meanwhile, I was thinking, this story is riveting. This collection is riveting. In “Beyond (p. 55), Stockton asks, “Has anything that anyone/has ever written helped us to feel closer/ to whatever it is we are longing to behold?”
Yes, and thank you, kind poet.
The Scarecrow of My Former Self, MoonPath Press, Newport, OR, 2024. 76 pages. 2024 Washington State Book Awards finalist, Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award finalist.
I Read this Poetry Collection: The Scarecrow of My Former Self by Sarah Stockton and Hope You Read It Too
by Pamela Hobart Carter
The poems of this poet’s first full length collection address corporeal affliction and the changes that befall the mind and soul of that body’s inhabitant. Sarah Stockton is Founder/Editor-in-Chief of River Mouth Review and author of two chapbooks and an upcoming third. She also writes nonfiction, much on spiritual practice and direction. For more than two decades she has lived with myalgic encephalomyelitis, a condition she describes in metaphor and effect, even naming metaphor, and by inferential extension, penning poems, the creation of a lulling rhythm, the shaping of language into story—here, almost into lullaby—as a coping strategy for pain:
“From Metaphors Attempted in Conversation with My Doctor” (p.9):
~If the heart is
the center of the trunk of a tree
then my body
is a carved and weathered cedar boat
rocking in the wind’s wake
rocking
I rock myself to sleep
Stockton divides the book of fifty-four poems into three roughly equal sections, “Skeptics and Healers,” “Castoffs and Connections,” and “Solitude and Grace,” with a haiku to introduce each.
The poet sent me The Scarecrow of My Former Self in exchange for my poetry collection, (as set up by Lana Hechtman Ayers, manager of MoonPath Press, Concrete Wolf, and World Enough Writers). As a kind of thank you note, I wanted to post my gratitude on Facebook, so I thought I’d dip into the poems to be able to say something not generic. I began with the final poem, the titular poem. Then I read nine more, turning pages toward the front of the book. Forcing myself to stop, I set the book aside and wrote my “it’s here” message knowing that otherwise I wouldn’t get that task done for hours or days. The story of the poet trying to understand her body and its behaviors (beyond her control and choice) was riveting.
The Scarecrow of My Former Self is attractive to look at and touch, with a cover of a bare tree, crows on the highest branches, as a gray silhouette on white, the title in large black letters over the image and the MoonPath Press color band along the bottom in ochre, an ochre with more green for the back cover and spine. MoonPath Press books are all handsome and feel nice. They are perfect bound. The blurbs from Jeannine Hall Gailey and Jill Khoury emphasize how this poetry delivers grace, hope, and reclamation as it declares realities of living with a chronic illness. When I picked up the book next, I wondered if all the poems dwelt in the realm of illness?
Yes, AND—
In “Studying the Vagus: Footnotes,” (p.11), a prose poem in numbered list form, I admired the zing and humor of “5. Correction by Editor: any comparison of a body/with a sea floor is a misrepresentation/of the biological facts./ One cannot stowaway in one’s own body.”
Good poems employ metaphor. Metaphor, by definition, yokes things. So, here is the sea floor spreading its depth and breadth across the pages of a collection focused on myalgic encephalomyelitis. Of course, Stockton hinges her work on a variety of metaphors that weave their variety into the imagery.
Not only by metaphor do other concerns appear in this book. There are a few poems that stand a short distance from the central theme such as “So Far Away” (p. 44), which yearns for her daughter. Through them all I learned a lot about this illness about which I knew next to nothing. Stockton has helped me better understand pain. For example, “Brain Fog Fragment” heartbreakingly lies double-spaced and nearly punctuation-free on page 18. The gaps and the line breaks between words and phrases promote a sense of things in pieces, a coming apart, as with the thought process in a brain fog. The reader gets a hint of the experience of the fog. I see definitive diction and formal structures as some of Stockton’s parries with the barrage of challenges hurled at her by a debilitating and mysterious medical condition. She faces a futility with candor, intelligence, and humor.
Many of her poems are familiar forms: haiku, sonnet, pantoum, abecedarian, epistolary, list, dialog, (or less familiar) antiphon. There are couplet-ed poems, left-justified blocks of text, tercets, double-spaced lines, semi-concrete shapes. There is a smidge of rhyme. Then there’s the shape of the whole book, from one version of the scarecrow to another, the hopeful initial scarecrow creation of “Survival Plan” (p.7) to the dancing entity of “The Scarecrow of My Former Self” (p. 69), weathering wild storms.
While the poet mourns in “Chronic,” p.20, “I surrender what I never grasped. Nothing sexy about/chronic pain, nothing funny—//not a good story.” Meanwhile, I was thinking, this story is riveting. This collection is riveting. In “Beyond (p. 55), Stockton asks, “Has anything that anyone/has ever written helped us to feel closer/ to whatever it is we are longing to behold?”
Yes, and thank you, kind poet.
The Scarecrow of My Former Self, MoonPath Press, Newport, OR, 2024. 76 pages. 2024 Washington State Book Awards finalist, Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award finalist.
July 1, 2025
A beautiful, raw, needed collection about living with chronic illness. It avoids the typical ableist expectations of using our circumstance to merely inspire the non-disabled world, and instead honestly depicts the crushing weight of an illness like ME. So many including myself suffer from this disease, and so little is talked about it - anywhere - much less in literature. Sarah Stockton over turns stones of suffering and finds meaning as well as loss. This is a beautiful book. A story that deserves to be told and heard.
April 2, 2024
Sarah transforms her silent suffering into something searingly beautiful as her poems take the reflective reader on a journey through a chronic illness. The poems evoke a sense of loss, yet transformative beauty, acceptance, revolt, peace. This poignant compilation of poetry is not just for those with a chronic illness and those who care for them — it’s for all of us who share this planet.
March 1, 2024
In beautifully written poems The Scarecrow of My Former Self explores the long journey from diagnosis to learning to live with a chronic illness. These poems don't hold back, don't euphemize pain, are not afraid to reveal deep vulnerability. They are profoundly honest.
January 10, 2026
Sarah Stockton's THE SCARECROW OF MY FORMER SELF (MoonPath Press) is a raw, unflinching collection about living with chronic illness. Brave in self-advocacy, tender in revolt, and the scarecrow: a metaphor for self-reclamation and renewal.
December 3, 2025
Wow! I read this twice in 2025, it's gorgeous.
This poetry is much more readable than many competitors-- more consistent sentence structure, use of spaces and punctuation, etc.
While the poems tend to be related to the author's chronic illness, concepts of depression, hope, pain, etc., are relatable to all readers. Strong nature themes increase readability for non-disabled readers.
Program topics: interpretive dance workshop; pair with The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness, or another NF/memoir book on chronic pain; poetry write-in; Poet Laureate events; art event, 3D or paper collage, to create your own representative scarecrow; voting tournament to select one poem to add to Poetry Walk (or, special poetry walk at one location, like Water Protectors YS event)-- make sure to include a virtual component!; bird ID program; pair with Mary Oliver.
Discussion prompts:
- See "Not a delusion" (p 13); in this poem and elsewhere, did anything prompt you to recognize ableism in thought patterns or stances that are well-accepted socially?
- "The way asking for help / generates its own exhaustion" (p 15)-- emotional exhaustion from feeling like a burden to a friend, or existential exhaustion that any possible improvement in symptoms is so distant, or literal/physical exhaustion from how teaching someone to do a task is, in the short term, more work than doing that task oneself, or other ways of being exhausted...
- "help me weave some dignity / from these abandoned hopes" (p 31)-- everyone has had to set aside an earlier imagined version of their future. In our go-getter culture of visualization and 5-year plans, this often feels like failure. Not getting a job directly after college, not marrying who or (by) when anticipated, infertility or pregnancy loss, divorce, etc.: not all life plan re-writing is illness-related. Does this line speak to any unanticipated changes in your own past?
-- (Sub-q) A rising tide lifts all boats. If we improve aspects of our culture because they are ableist, it would improve opportunities for everyone. Knowing that go-getter culture negatively impacts those with disabilities (and the families of people with disabilities), if we worked to improve, to remove the blame and guilt assigned to life-plan alterations, how would the situation improve for everyone else?
- "Forgive yourself for not healing. For not / helping. For not knowing how to start" (p 32)-- illuminates the ableism even in healing: the judgement and blame attached to a sick/disabled person not trying hard enough (not trialing the new supplement, new type of therapy, crystal, specialist; not researching nightly; not "working" at being a "good" sick person). See also p 39, #millions missing.
This poetry is much more readable than many competitors-- more consistent sentence structure, use of spaces and punctuation, etc.
While the poems tend to be related to the author's chronic illness, concepts of depression, hope, pain, etc., are relatable to all readers. Strong nature themes increase readability for non-disabled readers.
Program topics: interpretive dance workshop; pair with The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness, or another NF/memoir book on chronic pain; poetry write-in; Poet Laureate events; art event, 3D or paper collage, to create your own representative scarecrow; voting tournament to select one poem to add to Poetry Walk (or, special poetry walk at one location, like Water Protectors YS event)-- make sure to include a virtual component!; bird ID program; pair with Mary Oliver.
Discussion prompts:
- See "Not a delusion" (p 13); in this poem and elsewhere, did anything prompt you to recognize ableism in thought patterns or stances that are well-accepted socially?
- "The way asking for help / generates its own exhaustion" (p 15)-- emotional exhaustion from feeling like a burden to a friend, or existential exhaustion that any possible improvement in symptoms is so distant, or literal/physical exhaustion from how teaching someone to do a task is, in the short term, more work than doing that task oneself, or other ways of being exhausted...
- "help me weave some dignity / from these abandoned hopes" (p 31)-- everyone has had to set aside an earlier imagined version of their future. In our go-getter culture of visualization and 5-year plans, this often feels like failure. Not getting a job directly after college, not marrying who or (by) when anticipated, infertility or pregnancy loss, divorce, etc.: not all life plan re-writing is illness-related. Does this line speak to any unanticipated changes in your own past?
-- (Sub-q) A rising tide lifts all boats. If we improve aspects of our culture because they are ableist, it would improve opportunities for everyone. Knowing that go-getter culture negatively impacts those with disabilities (and the families of people with disabilities), if we worked to improve, to remove the blame and guilt assigned to life-plan alterations, how would the situation improve for everyone else?
- "Forgive yourself for not healing. For not / helping. For not knowing how to start" (p 32)-- illuminates the ableism even in healing: the judgement and blame attached to a sick/disabled person not trying hard enough (not trialing the new supplement, new type of therapy, crystal, specialist; not researching nightly; not "working" at being a "good" sick person). See also p 39, #millions missing.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews