Esther Stenson approaches the world with a writer’s eye and ear. Her poems capture the details of family and nature and return us to the wonders that are found there. Whether it is “the outhouse, / home of vagrant brown spiders and / a Sears & Roebuck catalog outdated for all but a final swipe,” or “vermillion ruffles of the / late-blooming petunia,” the details shimmer in her poems. We meet family members like “Grandpa Yoder, sharp as hidden glass, / reading Scripture by the light of one dim pull-chain bulb,” and Uncle Alvin, “Standing in the orchard, short-sleeved in tall grass, / tanned, intent on sliding the bow smoothly /across strings held taut,” and learn their stories. The poems sing when she writes about nature, where “Lobed and needled oak leaves / drift, swivel and swirl / from gray branches etched into the blue beyond,” and “out of the underbrush came / the towhee’s solo at evensong.” The poems ask us to stop and marvel at both the intricacies of nature and the strength of faith and families as they confront the losses and complexities of our world.
Susan Facknitz, Faculty Emeritus, James Madison University
Esther Stenson speaks as a gentle sister to her plainer kin even as she sings as a human sister to the wren. Dutiful daughter, lover, niece who pens portraits of the elders, her wanderlust words wend their way from Stuarts Draft to Big Valley to the lakes of Minnesota and then return to Loft Mountain. Written to render whole worlds, these poems engage the imagination with simple grace, conscientious detail, and great heart.
Julia Spicher Kasdorf, author Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields
