The Teller's Road, by L. Ward Abel

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. L. Ward Abel meditates on the connection between writing, mortality and landscape in his most recent poems. From small words to the universe itself, the poet searches for realizations, epiphanies, wonder, silence. In these poems, the veteran wordsmith exhibits his characteristic obsession with the natural world and the interior world, spirituality and humanity, the peaceful moment through his use of “half- sentences full of novels / or half-mornings full of lifetimes.” Abel declares, “…there is / No time / No present tense.” These pieces ultimately reach no conclusions except to admit there can be none. The work shows both the vulnerability and the triumph of the individual, and the desire for the simple life, whatever form it might take. After all, “we’re car lights / on an evening wall.” L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Galway Review, Worcester Review, Riverbed Review, Honest Ulsterman, Main Street Rag, others), including two recent nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of four full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (Erbacce-Press, 2016), The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021), and Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023).  He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, and he composes and plays music (Abel and Rawls). Abel lives in rural Georgia.