Animal Magnetism, by Colleen Wells is a think piece on the natural world and our place in it. Are we masters of the planet? Abusers? Supplicants? Prey?
In this collection of thoughtful poems, the author gives voice to her deeply personal and highly relatable musings regarding our precious, limited time on earth and our connection to all living things. She lovingly describes the graceful drape of a bee’s wing, the warm muzzle of a beloved dog, and then careens to a gruesome raccoon death that cannot be unseen. This achingly observant author takes her readers on a tour through the beautiful and sometimes brutal world as a metaphor for the unique, delicate, and enigmatic human psyche.
–Dorothy Sabean, Author, Seventh of Eleven: An Illustrated Memoir
Colleen Wells’s Animal Magnetism is raw emotion begging the reader to take a journey as perhaps only those with hurt can do.
Through these sometimes gut-wrenching poems, one can see that the author feels so deeply what others brush off, to the point where the reader is not sure whether she is talking about herself, or the bee in the attic. The reader wants to pull the writer back from the edge at one point she talks about sitting in her back porch waiting for happy, but happy didn’t come.
Colleen has a way of reminding us all that we are in a vast world, that we all play a part. All small. Here, yet not. There are poetry books, and then there is Animal Magnetism. If there was any confusion as to what matters before reading this gem, there won’t be when you are finished. To the last word it holds you and stays with you long after.
–Sherry McCaulley Palmer, author of Life with Charley
If there’s a place deeper than the bottom of one’s heart, then that’s where these poems come from. Colleen’s work explores the myriad of ways we’ve broken the compact with our fellow life forms, domestic and wild. Humor and the potential for redemption help leaven the pain, and throughout, Colleen demonstrates she cares deeply about the things many of us only briefly consider. These poems are an invitation to stop, pause and ponder the unfathomable beauty of the world in which we live, and appreciate all the creatures — great, small and everything in between.
–Jim Poyser, Author, The Last Actor and Other Stories
Patsy Rahn –
Walk into the pages of Animal Magnetism by Colleen Wells and you enter the world view of insect, bird and beast. Neither nature nor life is cuddly in these poems. You are enriched by the insights and introduced to the edges of madness that combine to present an intense experience of the chiaroscuro of life.