‘A poet of direct speech and muscular lexicon.’—Quill & Quire
Nimbly slipping between personae, masks, and moods, the prosody-driven poems of Sum weigh the volatility and mutability of the self against the forces of habit, instinct, and urge. With homages to Hopkins, Graves, Wislawa Szymborska, Paul Muldoon, and more, and in allusion-dappled, playfully sprung stanzas, this third book from poet and critic Zachariah Wells both wears its influences openly and spins a sound texture all its own, in a collection far greater than its parts.
Zachariah Wells is the author of two collections of poetry and a book of criticism (Career Limiting Moves, 2014).
Table of Content
Ego Sum
I.
Anatta
Proscenium
A Spandrel in the Works
Fallacious Biography of a Yardlong Spike
The Parkinsonian Reflexologist
You Can’t Really
Squalid
Underwhelmed, If That’s a Word
II.
To the Superb Lyrebird, That Cover Band of the Australian Bush
Magic Man
To the Ignominious Blobfish, Trawled from the Bottom
Achromatope
The Title Track
The Savanna Hypothesis
Broken Arrow
Choose Your Own Debenture
III.
Dream Machine
Moths and Men
The Eyes
The Engineer Ponders Intelligent Design
Noise
Hyde
Rye
Mental Moonshine
Broken
The Wound
Vasopressin
Love Song: Thou Alone
One and One
Sunk Costs
Baffle
I
About the author
Zachariah Wells is the author of two collections of poetry (
Unsettled and
Track & Trace), a chapbook (
Baffle) as well as a children’s book (
Anything But Hank!, with Rachel Lebowitz). He is also the editor of
Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and
The Essential Kenneth Leslie. He lives with his family in Halifax, Nova Scotia.