Wells, Jonathan: Debris

Four Way Books, paperback

Publication Date: February 15, 2021

Publisher Marketing: Glinting vestiges of the lyric in a world rife with brutality

In Debris Jonathan Wells offers a stark foil between the lyric world of the poem and an outside world that is violent, hard, and relentless. While many poems of the collection work to transform this outer world through imagination, resourcefulness, and even beautification, the arc of the collection leads us to the conclusion that dire enough circumstances can render lyricism impossible. In one of the opening poems "Notes from the Invasion," the speaker asserts "The worst has happened. There is nothing / to imagine," and the collection as a whole asks us to consider the question: without imagination, what is left of the mind? How are we to find peace? Experience love? Wells invites us to commune in magical escapism and phenomenology of the quotidian, as well as in solemn observations of violence and suffering. Despite the collection's thesis on the impossibility of lyricism, the poems herein are persistent remnants that honor the lyric and keep its memory alive.