Barbara Presnell
Blue Star
by Barbara Presnell
Praise for the book
“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, author of The 13th Sunday after Pentecost and Light at the Seam
About Blue Star
Blue Star is a story of war and its effect on family. The poems weave history, census and military records, letters, journals, and other documents to tell the 100-year story of a one Southern family. The title, refers to the stars family members hang from banners in their windows when a son or daughter is in service (now noted in our Blue Star Memorial highways and elsewhere). Interspersed with poems of war are accounts of a mother and her son as he grows from a child into a young man starting a family of his own. ​​​​​​
"Everything here welcomes us
except these hard stones at our feet and
the red, red sun, firing down between clouds."
—from "Finding Fox Red, 2014"
Poems from Blue Star
What Flutters
Heat rising. Tick of afternoon sun.
The screen door, banging. A telegram.
When it comes, Hannah is in the kitchen making dinner.
She slips her greased finger beneath the flap,
hands trembling so she can hardly read.
Company almost wiped out. Stop. Our boys
fought bravely to the end. Stop.
It’s the almost she clings to as day splinters
into days, then a week.
Wings tipping. Grass that pillows.
Loose fabric. A place called France—she’s seen it on a map
and Slim sent a postcard back in July.
Words. Picture of a cow in a field like theirs.
Bone jur scribbled above the cow's ear.
Seems like a fine place on the back side. And,
Everybody says hi. I sure miss
your cold ice tea, Mama.
Flotilla of red leaves. Fine hairs
of a sweet potato. Screen door
banging. Her husband Josiah holds the letter.
He's alive. Our boy. Then names those gone:
the Dixon's youngest, Jimmy Gatlin,
Big John Pugh. More.
His gray chin on her shoulder.
Dusk stirring in.
"I sure miss your cold ice tea, Mama."
