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A South Carolina Requiem
by Tony Scully
Imprint: Resource Publications
A South Carolina Requiem, the final book in Tony Scully's trilogy, evokes his earlier books, A Carolina Psalter and Come into the Light, with poems addressing foundation texts with questions and occasional confrontation as we move into new understandings of Spirit.
As South Carolina strives forward in cultural achievements in science, education, and the arts, A South Carolina Requiem celebrates the warmth of its people and their continuing determination to fight for justice and civil rights.
A South Carolina Requiem acknowledges the struggles over the centuries of dirt farmers and mill workers, the removal of the Cherokee in the Trail of Tears, and the injustices of slavery and Jim Crow as the threshold of rebirth and transformation. Scully's poems interact with South Carolina traditions and rituals: Baptist hymns; Presbyterian hymns; Anglican hymns; the Kaddish; the Cherokee prayer at death; significant sermons in the history of the Carolinas; and the Requiem Mass, itself a compendium of ancient and revered texts. The poems also interact with the sometimes controversial public events and personalities that have challenged and ultimately transformed the people of the state.
Tony Scully has been a Broadway playwright, a Jesuit, and mayor of a Southern city. After Boston College and the Yale School of Drama, he pursued liturgical reform at the Woodstock Center for Religion and Worship in Manhattan. In Hollywood, he was a writer/consultant. He has taught painting and worked in street theater. He is the author of A Carolina Psalter (Resource, 2019) and Come into the Light (Resource, 2020).
“From a single site—South Carolina—and with complex insight, Scully’s meditations forge a bond among people: those back then, those now, and those in between; those of various colors, ethnicities, politics, and classes; those religious and nonreligious in today’s cultural crossroads when ‘difference’ among people is the way to go that, in the end, separates us, one from another. Scully opts for ‘communion’ that, in the end, brings us together. Boy, do we need him now!”
—Drew Casper, University of Southern California, emeritus
“These beautiful meditations raise up the people of our past. Their stories are at the heart of America. Tony Scully’s engaging, graceful writing interprets diverse voices of South Carolina as nowhere else on earth. In the third of his Carolina trilogy, Scully excites our imagination with compassion and new understanding of fresh possibilities for human cooperation and love.”
—Martha Daniels, South Carolina author and historian
“‘A love letter to South Carolina,’ Tony Scully calls A South Carolina Requiem. Love is complicated. So, too, the boundaries the poet pushes and urges to come together. Bringing to life events in and beyond his adopted state, with sources from the Requiem Mass to Wikipedia, Scully bridges past, present, and future to compel examination of struggle in the embracing light of humanity, time, and spirituality. This ‘letter’ entices opening and responding.”
—Joan A. Inabinet and L. Glen Inabinet, authors of A History of Kershaw County, South Carolina
“This brilliant compilation of poetry tells stories—evocative stories of a people and a place, at once haunting and inspiring, filled with blood and iron and courage and grace, above all unforgettable. Tony Scully is an astonishing wordsmith whose truths cut to the bone.”
—Richard Brown, director, University of South Carolina Press
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