Unsettled Accounts Poems [Hardcover]

To take the mess of life and make meaning from it is what all poets seek to do. For Will Wells, recipient of the thirteenth annual Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, this includes reaching across centuries and continents, into the minds and hearts of disparate individualsAlbert Einstein, Andrea Yates, the traveler from Porlock, Dante, or Holocaust survivors, including his own grandmotherto extract the personal value embedded there for him.

By turns funny, shocking, gentle, and musing, the poems ofUnsettled Accountsreflect Will Wellss constant attention to his environment and to his pastand to our environment and our pastand his persistent effort to keep them real and whole by turning them into art.

To take the mess of life and make meaning from it is what all poets seek to do. For Will Wells, recipient of the thirteenth annual Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, this includes reaching across centuries and continents, into the minds and hearts of disparate individuals—Albert Einstein, Andrea Yates, the traveler from Porlock, Dante, or Holocaust survivors, including
his own grandmother—to extract the personal value embedded there for him. By turns funny, shocking, gentle, and musing, the poems ofUnsettled Accountsreflect Will Wells’s constant attention to his environment and to his past—and to our environment and our past—and his persistent effort.

These are the poems of a poet who takes his obligations seriouslyobligations to his world, his family, his intellectual heritage: The longing / in belongings lines up in rows of books, / a thousand titles of how owned I am. These highly musical poems, which include a generous helping of superbly crafted sonnets, are beautifully written, smart, and movingrich in all the rewards poetry offers.
 Andrew Hudgins