In Thirteen September Moons, James Lenfestey, generally a poet of robust, solar, high-spirited voice, surprises us with a new voice, nocturnal, literally lunar, perhaps the solar voice at low ebb. This voice is "angelic" in the way of Wim Wenders's contemporary angels who watch half-envious, half-horrified the brash glories of human life from a disincarnate distance. This moon-angel voice is a cunning vehicle for mirroring back to us earthlings our abundance of terrestrial treasures and our reckless endangerment of them. Profoundly environmental, these poems ask utterly necessary questions of us, such as "what terrible more / are you capable of?" and "what do you say / to the darker person next to you / forever a part of your life?" This book is an unsettling gem.

--Thomas R. Smith, author of Windy Day at Kabekona and The Glory