Scales Like Feathers

The poems in this first collection from Lauren Hester captivate with intelligent precision. Her lyric landscapes have an atmosphere of loss and yearning as she comprehends the facets of a number of thematic polestars: relationships in their complex range between wounding and fierce joy, the struggle between the intellect and the flesh, and an absent father, whether distant in his Biblical heaven or in memory. While they are the work of a young poet they are not young poems: rather, their assurance and strong phrasing surprise by giving us something new that is also wise in how they illuminate a world that is both young and ancient. Hester is a talent to watch.--Bryan Penberthy, Lucktown