Free Rein

Author: Laura Chester

Publisher: Burning Deck (1988)

A focus on language fuses with great rushes of energy, musical, sensual, a feeling of life connecting to more life. Everything is movement in Free Rein, even thematically: a writer moves from city to country, from struggling with disease to feeling a kind of cure in words, from isolation toward love. But love in the fresh air, with quick moving views, often from horseback at a full gallop, giving the impulse Free Rein.

“What stands out is the natural flowing sound and seamless coherence of the prose, an extraordinary quality these days, and the sure grasp of the experience…. A fine achievement. I’m delighted with it.”

–Carl Rakosi

“Powerful, heart-rocking poems with a drive in them that’s both a drum and a trumpet reaching out with high, hard notes.”

–Howard McCord