Muse in the Wells
by Wayne Pernu
979-8-9940326-3-3
979-8994032664
In "Muse in the Wells," poet Wayne Pernu journeys through frozen landscapes, forgotten roads, restless spirits, and the thin boundary between life and death. Rooted in the North Country’s stark beauty, these poems weave myth, memory, solitude, faith, aging, loss, and the search for meaning. From snow-covered forests and abandoned towns to crows, storms, and moonlit roads, Pernu’s work blends old folklore with deeply human questions. Meditative yet haunting, his voice confronts mortality and unseen forces. For readers drawn to lyrical poetry and mythic landscapes, Muse in the Wells lingers like winter wind through pines—stark, resonant, and unforgettable.
Pernu does not write ghosts; he writes the consciousness that lingers after the flesh has failed. ...The hunger, the snow, and the mire are so visceral that the reader forgets they are reading about a ghost and instead feels they are reading about the most extreme limits of human endurance. In "The Ice Fisherman," the poet grounds the metaphysical in the physical: a man stooping in the snow becomes a meditation on divine silence, and waiting for fish becomes a more honest theology than waiting for judgment.
— from an Amazon review
Born in Montana and raised in Northern Minnesota, Wayne Pernu spent time in Minneapolis and New York before settling in Portland, Oregon. He began writing poetry at an early age, and his work has been translated into Russian.
