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Wells Jenna Butler Jenna Butler draws on her own experiences of her grandmother's disappearance into senile dementia to reassemble a sensual world in longpoem form that positively crackles with imagery and rhythm. Identities and memories flow and flicker as she strings together fragments of narrative into stories that comprise one woman's life. It entwines her disappearing life with that of the persona of the woman's granddaughter through a choreographed confusion of identities: of she's and I's. Few poets could execute this with convincing solemnity, while simultaneously recovering the dignity of the sufferer and her loved ones. Butler does. Poetry lovers, critics and scholars, and readers who crave a deft style charged with honest emotion should read Wells. Format:  EPUB ISBN:  978-0-88864-525-8 Price:  CND$ 15.99, USD$ 15.99, £ 13.99 Discount:  Trade Subject:  Poetry/Canadian Literature Publication Date:  July 2012 Reviews "[Wells] explores the structure of the prose-poem, and the prairie narrative stretched out as long as a line can follow. Arranged in poem-sections, the poem-fragments hold up as a series of family photographs either blurry or apocryphal, and write the prairie sentence/long line with exquisite grace.” rob mclennan's blog, March 19, 2012 [Full posting athttp://bit.ly/FSaEgs] "Jenna Butler blurs the boundaries of identity in Wells…” Off the Shelf, Geist, Summer 2012 "[English-Canadian poet Jenna Butler] speaks on rural life as well as the family life that we all share... Wells is a charming read...” Wisconsin Bookwatch, May 2012 Interview with Jenna Butler on CBC "In a fragmented, sensory assemblage, Butler witnesses her grandmother's disappearance into dementia. The loss of language is not tidy. Post-it notes are found in 'arcane places.'... Wells is a beautiful homage to a beloved grandparent, but also a poignant and gently persistent inquiry into peripheral loss. Butler gets at the difficulty of 'seeing our own lives erased' from another's memory, and how that leaves us 'left doubting, in a deep place, the truth of our own existence.'” Shawna Lemay, Edmonton Journal, April 7, 2012 [Full article at http://bit.ly/HzQUjb] "The poems use a rich, sensual vocabulary of flora & fauna, delineating each separate item of once loved & now lost local life, now retrieved by the poet to make manifest the world the remembered grandmother can no longer say into being.... Wells is a beautifully sad acknowledgement of the losses all must face, made deeply personal & universal through its sharply observed images of a life now gone. It’s a fine example of how to take lyric & shake it into something beyond the merely personal.” Eclectic Ruckus, March 23, 2012 [Full post at http://bit.ly/IgulkV]