To take the mess of life and make meaning from it is what all poets seek to do. For Will Wells, recipient of the thirteenth annual Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, this includes reaching across centuries and continents, into the minds and hearts of disparate individuals--Albert Einstein, Andrea Yates, the traveler from Porlock, Dante, or Holocaust survivors, including his own grandmother--to extract the personal value embedded there for him. By turns funny, shocking, gentle, and musing, the poems of "Unsettled Accounts" reflect Will Wells's constant attention to his environment and to his past--and to our environment and our past--and his persistent effort.