Night at the Musée d'Orsay

Night at the Musée d'Orsay: Poems of Paris & Other Great European Cities is a vibrant memoir of travel poems centering on Wells' appreciation of well-known European painters, architects, writers, and musicians associated with great European cities. Although beauty is Wells' major theme in her poetry collection, she also delves into the darker side of various artists' lives and their works with depth and precision. In conjunction, Wells interweaves her own personal life into her travel poems, which illustrate her creative and emotional responses to her travels at different times in her life-from young adult in France to older woman confronting aging and mortality in Barcelona. Her poetry encompasses various poetic styles-lyric, narrative, and surprisingly for a book on European travels, even haiku.   

Night at the Musée d'Orsay contains five sections: The first section, France, highlights artists in Paris-Van Gogh, Chagall, Renoir, Matisse and novelist Balzac. Italy, the second chapter, features poems about Rome, Orvieto, and Assisi, spotlighting contemporary organist Giampaolo Di Rosa in Rome, and Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli in Orvieto.  The third section, Austria, contains poems on musicians Amadeus Mozart and his sister Nannerl, the architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and contemporary light artist Victoria Coeln, all in Vienna.  The Czech Republic, the fourth chapter, features poems on the Renaissance and baroque city, Český Krumlov, and Franz Kafka in Prague. The final section, Spain, visits the Prado in Madrid with poems on Velázquez and Goya, and ends with a long poem on the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and his still incomplete sacred temple in Barcelona, La Sagrada Familía.