Westerly

A young soldier dons Napoleons hat. An out-of-work man wanders Berlin, dreaming he is Peter the Great.

The famous exile Dante finally returns to his native city to ahang his crown of laurels up.a Familial and historical apparitions haunt this dazzling collection of poems by Will Schutt, the 2012 recipient of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets award.Coupled with Schutts own voice are the voices of some of Italys most prominent nineteenth- and twentieth-century poets including Giacomo Leopardi, Alda Merini, Eugenio Montale, and Edoardo Sanguineti.

Subtle, discerning, restrained, the poems in Westerly probe a vast emotional geography, with its contingent pleasures and pains, awhere the doors always dark, the sky still blue.a                                asome narrow sickness buried you.                                Whatever boyhood I had                                fate hijacked too.  Old friend, is this that                               world we stayed awake all night for?                                Truth dropped in.  Far off,                                your cool hand points the way.