The title of Barbara Presnell's blazing new book of poems, Blue Star, refers to the stars families hang from banners in their windows when a son or daughter is in military service. This timely, lyric, and quietly searing volume weaves history, census and military records, letters, journals, and other artifacts to document a hundred years of war and its wrenching effect on family. These are poems of witness, dire and poignant, that chant long after you close the book, poems that exult the working class-an ethnography of farmers, blacksmiths, and mill workers tithed to the earth for all time, and bound to defend it even unto death, "their steps weary with unfinished war." Barbara Presnell is the heir and daughter of their sacred anthems. Blue Star is utterly essential. - Joseph Bathanti
