Mycocosmic

Beneath the 50-odd lyric poems in Wheeler’s sixth collection (after Radioland) runs a linguistic mycelium—a thin, ruminative subtext inhabiting the footer of each page like a source of energy and creative nourishment (“memory’s witchery”) from which the poems, like mushrooms, rise into passionate expressions of the personal “histories and futures always / present, all at once” haunting the poet’s psyche. The mushroom stands as the poet’s sigil, symbol of life’s tendency toward random, prolific change (“what futures / each mushroom lifts into being”), representing a universe that “blazes with chances.” Triggered by a beloved mother’s passing, Wheeler recounts the intimacies, failings, and abuses (a father as “mean as dirt”) of familial life with edged, yet artful, candor (“I’m my mother, / shopping for potions to clear the fury up.”).