Vallum Magazine Reviews The Unlit Path Behind the House

Be sure to check out the current issue of Vallum magazine for an in-depth review of Margo Wheaton’s latest poetry collection The Unlit Path Behind the House.

The full review by Bill Neumire can be found in the 3:2 “THE WILD” issue (print or digital) of Vallum.

Below is an excerpt taken from Neumire’s review:

[Wheaton] has this ability to hit on an image and let it talk with its resonance
instead of ruining it with intrusive reportage. It is as if being seen
is more real than anything else, or as the speaker says later, it’s as though
light makes objects “more like themselves.”

The collection often works with a tone of dark mystery, but in and around
those moments are moments of romance and sensuality, moments that
exalt touch to the highest sense, as in “Joyride”: “How I wanted / to take
your wrist in my palm, feel its wild / robin rebellion.”

***
Through the alcoholism and scandal, through the distance and heartache
and the bucking against fate’s path, the speaker ultimately finds hope in
the most basic of our senses: touch. And in this sensual experience of
life, there is victory, as expressed here in “Rain”:

As if the separate parts of his body
were mourners leaning against
each other, touch

the only thing that’s left
in the long, incomprehensible night.

It’s a quiet, subdued but palpable victory of sensuality that reminds the
reader, “Nothing here // escapes redemption.”

Read the full review (requires Vallum subscription)

The Unlit Path Behind the House