This Here Paradise

This Here Paradise begins with an epigraph from the work of Welsh poet, Menna Elfyn: "your language a hymn/ lost in the multitude,/ requiem for a world/ that's forgetting how to be". As if in response to this "forgetting," Wharton's poems move from the personal to cross a panorama of hopeful attentiveness. Clear images combine with a distinctive sense of rhythm and music to shape a collection both straight-ahead readable and carefully thoughtful, serious and playful. There is a recognition that paradise includes both highs and lows. The presumptive duality of these two conditions suggests a tension that resolves through the book's five sections, as Wharton opens a suitcase of birds and watches them soar over a landscape alive with radiant, open waters.