Review of Margo Wheaton\u27s The Unlit Path Behind the House

Kneeland, Adam J

English

Scholars Commons

The Goose
Volume 15 | No. 1 Article 16
8-23-2016
The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo
Wheaton
Adam J. Kneeland
University of Victoria
Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America
Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment Commons
Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose
This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an
authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante
de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez
scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
Kneeland, Adam J.. "The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo Wheaton." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 16, 2016,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/16.
"Words you Know and Cannot Say:" Poetic 
Surrender in Margo Wheaton’s The Unlit 
Path Behind the House 
 
The Unlit Path Behind the House by 
MARGO WHEATON 
McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016 $16.95 
 
Reviewed by ADAM KNEELAND 
 
 One of the most striking aspects of 
Margo Wheaton’s poetry is her formal and 
stylistic flexibility. Her voice is impressively 
consistent and recognizable throughout, 
even in those poems that shift from the 
tight, spare language that characterizes 
much of her work to more relaxed prose 
lines. In her subjects, too, Wheaton is 
surprisingly versatile, and her voice lends 
itself equally well to ekphrastic poems 
about Van Gogh, moments between lovers, 
strange encounters with a drunken 
neighbour and his record collection, and the 
dark edge of the woods. 
 Regardless of their setting, poems in 
Margo Wheaton’s first collection dwell, 
more often than not, in liminal spaces—the 
eponymous path behind the house, the 
edges of woodland, fields beyond the 
railroad tracks, the suspended time of “the 
slow drag of death” (“Torn II” 4) in the wake 
of a tragedy. We rarely see Wheaton’s 
subjects move beyond these liminal spaces 
and times, or at least not easily; more than 
anything, her poems are marked by a 
tension that quietly vibrates throughout her 
collection, a tension that speaks as much to 
Wheaton’s poetic philosophy as it does 
about her poetic subjects’ journeys.  
“Pause,” for example, begins, “At 
the edge of these murmuring / woods are 
words you know / and cannot say” (1-3). 
Although Wheaton’s poems just as often 
take place indoors as they do out, this 
beginning is typical of Wheaton’s poems—
the speaker hesitates on the edge, 
considering entrance into a world that, 
although it is alive with nonhuman voices, is 
not necessarily understood. The speaker is 
sure that within the woods are the 
necessary words and the ability to speak 
them, “a name for the loneliness” (12) and 
“Words to formulate the question / fading 
light is the answer to” (17-18). Yet the pull 
to enter the forest and find the words that 
might enable coherent expression is 
arrested by a profusion of discrete, 
distracting details. The speaker is unable to 
stop contemplating individual pine needles 
and “the way each piece / of frozen rain 
dissolves” (24-25). The poem ends without 
resolution, the dissolution of each raindrop 
mirroring the speaker’s ultimate failure to 
find words to express the whole.  
 The following poem, “Gifts,” does 
something similar, although here it is the 
poem itself that struggles to move beyond 
hesitation.  In the first section we see the 
“Full moon, silent as a bone. a hole cut /  
out of the twittering sky” (1-2). The moon, a 
familiar image, is alienating, and its 
strangeness means that the poem struggles 
to find coherence: “Wind. Waves. 
Immeasurable sea – / gifts we can’t open; 
we don’t have hands” (9-10). As in “Pause,” 
the inability to fully perceive and express 
the setting undoes language.  “Forget how 
to read” (4), the poem says, and Wheaton’s 
laconic voice here makes the statement 
ambiguous. Is this a fact or a command, a 
result of poetic uncertainty or an answer to 
it? Regardless, the first section of the poem 
finds “Vowels scattered all over the floor. / 
Poems are white flags” (7-8). Yet the poem 
is written, despite it being a surrender.  
Everywhere in Wheaton’s work there are 
attempts to move beyond confusion and 
alienation. Wheaton’s subjects and poems 
1
Kneeland: The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo Wheaton
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016
both possess an instinctive “feeling / for 
narrative” (“Torn VI” 12-13), a desire “fierce 
as the sea / knocking against a resolute 
shore: to unlock / door after door after 
door” (“When the Heart Believes it’s Found 
a Home” 34-35).  
 And some poems do achieve 
coherence, often by translating the 
murmurs and silences of otherness through 
the body. Many of the most striking and 
least self-conscious images are erotic, the 
sensual body grounding poetic language. 
The second section of “Gifts” turns from the 
scattered pieces of words to a coherent 
moment as the sun falls on kitchen gadgets 
and “suddenly everything’s possible” (14). 
The poem ends with “elbows point[ing] / to 
the sky” (19-20), a more hopeful and 
physical gesture towards what the poem 
initially found difficult to express with only 
scattered vowels. 
 With her recurring interest in the 
limitations and possibilities of poetry, that 
anti-Romantic possibility of failure most 
notable in those poems that come closest 
to nature poetry and lyric, Wheaton joins 
an ongoing poetic conversation most 
notable in the work of such contemporaries 
as Don McKay, Tim Lilburn, and Jan Zwicky. 
Wheaton adds another strong and 
memorable voice to this discussion and 
begins a career that is worth following. 
 
ADAM KNEELAND is a Ph.D. student at the 
University of Victoria’s Department of 
English studying contemporary Canadian 
literature, ecocriticism, and new 
materialisms. 
 
2
The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 16
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/16


The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo Wheaton

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 15 | No. 1 Article 168-23-2016The Unlit Path Behind the House by MargoWheatonAdam J. KneelandUniversity of VictoriaPart of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North AmericaCommons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeKneeland, Adam J.. "The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo Wheaton." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 16, 2016,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/16."Words you Know and Cannot Say:" Poetic Surrender in Margo Wheaton’s The Unlit Path Behind the House  The Unlit Path Behind the House by MARGO WHEATON McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016 $16.95  Reviewed by ADAM KNEELAND   One of the most striking aspects of Margo Wheaton’s poetry is her formal and stylistic flexibility. Her voice is impressively consistent and recognizable throughout, even in those poems that shift from the tight, spare language that characterizes much of her work to more relaxed prose lines. In her subjects, too, Wheaton is surprisingly versatile, and her voice lends itself equally well to ekphrastic poems about Van Gogh, moments between lovers, strange encounters with a drunken neighbour and his record collection, and the dark edge of the woods.  Regardless of their setting, poems in Margo Wheaton’s first collection dwell, more often than not, in liminal spaces—the eponymous path behind the house, the edges of woodland, fields beyond the railroad tracks, the suspended time of “the slow drag of death” (“Torn II” 4) in the wake of a tragedy. We rarely see Wheaton’s subjects move beyond these liminal spaces and times, or at least not easily; more than anything, her poems are marked by a tension that quietly vibrates throughout her collection, a tension that speaks as much to Wheaton’s poetic philosophy as it does about her poetic subjects’ journeys.  “Pause,” for example, begins, “At the edge of these murmuring / woods are words you know / and cannot say” (1-3). Although Wheaton’s poems just as often take place indoors as they do out, this beginning is typical of Wheaton’s poems—the speaker hesitates on the edge, considering entrance into a world that, although it is alive with nonhuman voices, is not necessarily understood. The speaker is sure that within the woods are the necessary words and the ability to speak them, “a name for the loneliness” (12) and “Words to formulate the question / fading light is the answer to” (17-18). Yet the pull to enter the forest and find the words that might enable coherent expression is arrested by a profusion of discrete, distracting details. The speaker is unable to stop contemplating individual pine needles and “the way each piece / of frozen rain dissolves” (24-25). The poem ends without resolution, the dissolution of each raindrop mirroring the speaker’s ultimate failure to find words to express the whole.   The following poem, “Gifts,” does something similar, although here it is the poem itself that struggles to move beyond hesitation.  In the first section we see the “Full moon, silent as a bone. a hole cut /  out of the twittering sky” (1-2). The moon, a familiar image, is alienating, and its strangeness means that the poem struggles to find coherence: “Wind. Waves. Immeasurable sea – / gifts we can’t open; we don’t have hands” (9-10). As in “Pause,” the inability to fully perceive and express the setting undoes language.  “Forget how to read” (4), the poem says, and Wheaton’s laconic voice here makes the statement ambiguous. Is this a fact or a command, a result of poetic uncertainty or an answer to it? Regardless, the first section of the poem finds “Vowels scattered all over the floor. / Poems are white flags” (7-8). Yet the poem is written, despite it being a surrender.  Everywhere in Wheaton’s work there are attempts to move beyond confusion and alienation. Wheaton’s subjects and poems 1Kneeland: The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo WheatonPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016both possess an instinctive “feeling / for narrative” (“Torn VI” 12-13), a desire “fierce as the sea / knocking against a resolute shore: to unlock / door after door after door” (“When the Heart Believes it’s Found a Home” 34-35).   And some poems do achieve coherence, often by translating the murmurs and silences of otherness through the body. Many of the most striking and least self-conscious images are erotic, the sensual body grounding poetic language. The second section of “Gifts” turns from the scattered pieces of words to a coherent moment as the sun falls on kitchen gadgets and “suddenly everything’s possible” (14). The poem ends with “elbows point[ing] / to the sky” (19-20), a more hopeful and physical gesture towards what the poem initially found difficult to express with only scattered vowels.  With her recurring interest in the limitations and possibilities of poetry, that anti-Romantic possibility of failure most notable in those poems that come closest to nature poetry and lyric, Wheaton joins an ongoing poetic conversation most notable in the work of such contemporaries as Don McKay, Tim Lilburn, and Jan Zwicky. Wheaton adds another strong and memorable voice to this discussion and begins a career that is worth following.  ADAM KNEELAND is a Ph.D. student at the University of Victoria’s Department of English studying contemporary Canadian literature, ecocriticism, and new materialisms.  2The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 16https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/16

https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1299&amp;context=thegoose

The Unlit Path Behind the House by Margo Wheaton

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Scholars Commons

Wilfrid Laurier University