Wells' book tracks and traces Canada
By Stefanie Helbich
Lance Writer
March 17, 2010
 Zachariah Wells’ new book of poetry, Track & Trace, is a whirlwind of exploration.
Wells takes us from coast to coast—north, east, and west—across our great Canadian nation and invites his readers to consider the nation in which they live.
His poems resonate with every Canadian and allow them to reflect upon the quintessential experience that we all share.
While his poems speak to unique experiences there is a quality of familiarity to each.
The collection of sonnets entitled “After the Blizzard” calls upon the reader to visualize a parking lot blanketed in snow, the snowplow’s amber strobe lights and the sight of a dog marking the snow.
The post-modern sonnets function as a conversation between the poet’s thoughts, inviting the reader’s insights on the snow in Halifax, a snow that is shared across the country—except, perhaps, in Vancouver.
Similarly, “Skunk” calls upon remembered experiences, evokes the reader to recall the pungent scent and then “make it bearable. When you live with a constant/scent in your nostrils, you can’t/stand it at first, then come to love it, then/it grows so faint you forget its existence.”
It is a memory that is always in our minds, and Wells does an exceptional job of bringing that memory to our noses, making it so that we can almost taste the scent once more as we did driving down the highway at some point in the past.
This book of poetry goes a step further than other books by being decorated and designed by renowned artist Seth. Black and white illustrations that are supposed to embody the nature of Canadian winters are interspersed throughout the book.
Unfortunately the illustrations do little to add to the collection of poetry, as they are disconnected from the poems and seem tacked into the book.
The poems deal with so much more than Canadian winters and Seth failed to capture the charm that Wells imbues into his poems when talking about wildlife, about baseball in the summer, or about the death of his dog Mutts.
Despite this, however, the collection of poems stands out as being an essential handbook to the Canadian experience.
Every Canadian, whether native or immigrant, can find something in this book that speaks to them personally, that reminds them of a treasured memory from childhood or with family.
It is an essential book of poetry for every bookshelf, one that I continue to revisit as I contemplate what it means to be Canadian.
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