Overview

These poems are engaging, soulful and inspiring. Through a series of reunions, the poems provide snapshots of the author's journey from an Amish school to life in other countries. Additional portraits of various family members interest and amuse, while reflections on nature inspire gratitude for the good in our lives.

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9781646621385

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Reviews

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 Whether it is the outhouse, / home of vagrant brown spiders and / a Sears & Roebuck catalog outdated for all but a final swipe, or vermillion ruffles of the / late-blooming petunia, the details shimmer in her poems.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

Author Information

Esther Yoder Stenson grew up in an Amish Mennonite home in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. She lived and taught in El Salvador for nearly three years in the 1970s before earning a B.A. in Education from Sterling College in Kansas in 1985. She completed a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics at Georgetown University in 1988 and taught English in China (5 years). While teaching in China, she met her Minnesota Lutheran husband. Upon returning from China in 1995, she worked in the writing center at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia and received an M. A. in English/Creative Writing (2008). She also taught English Literature and Writing at JMU until 2014. In the spring of 2015, she and her husband spent six months teaching English in Port Said, Egypt. Most recently, she taught in the Intensive English Program at Eastern Mennonite University. Esther's poetry has appeared in Dreamseeker, Tongue Screws and Testimonies (Herald Press, 2010), and she has published one book of poetry titled Miracle Temple (Cascadia Press, 2009).

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