Sunrise In-Between the Lines—Book Review: Golden

by Blair E. Vandehey

Following her release of pilot volume Nocturnal, the poet Wilder expanded her unnamed celestial-themed series with Golden, a sun-centric collection. A stark contrast to the melancholy pages of the first book, Golden illuminates the ‘so much more’ in life that Wilder always knew was out there; in a four-part love letter to herself, she reflects on both the growth-inducing and toxic parts of navigating relationships with each part of herself and others before turning towards the sunrise after living nocturnally.

The classic girl-meets-boy trope that Wilder mused on in Nocturnal is reimagined as girl-meets-self in Golden, our author playing on the language she originally used to address other people. With the same romantic adoration in the first work, her pieces in Golden are, though treated seriously and sincerely, a satire on the time she thought she needed the love of another person to be complete. Now, her old romantics are re-dedicated to her overflowing lust to live as she kisses her own wounds better and holds her own hand. Brazen declarations of forever are redirected to herself as she realizes that she’s the only person who’s been with her (and will continue to be with her) every step of the way, and the comfortable concept of ‘home’ undergoes a revolution from something one creates with someone else to something that a person can find in themself.

Even though Wilder dedicates the work to self-celebration, Golden presents itself as more interpersonally romantic than it truly is with poems which appear to ardently declare surrender to ‘you.’ At first, this seems to betray the idea of inner solace our author champions for this collection. That is, until the very end, where she reveals through references to earlier poems that more often than not, the ‘you’ she addressed so endearingly throughout is actually herself. It is sometimes made clear that ‘you’ is rather a lover, but most often, the lines blur–in her covert intrapersonal love poems, she talks to the ‘you’ in the same reverent fashion she addresses herself in more explicit self-love works. In other words, one of the ‘yous’ is someone else she leaves behind, and the other is the person she comes into–a self-confident, self-contented Wilder. This occurs as such: In one of Golden’s final poems titled “I’LL SEE YOU,” “i’ll be the hand that leads you…if it means i get to be by your side through it all” is a subtle callback to when she declared “so i held my own hand and gave myself forever” in an earlier work. Wilder’s atmospheric plot twist forces the reader to reexamine Golden’s romance in its entirety. As a union of our author and her second-person self, readers come to understand that Wilder was not betraying her commitment to a collection solely about herself with this love story between the lines. Rather, it contributes to the theme, showing her progress in her journey to feel complete inside–no longer outside–herself as someone she is learning to admire anew.

The past is not only supplementary to the present- and future-oriented poetry of Golden—it is essential. Though Wilder chooses not to dwell on her past for the sake of what’s here and what’s to come, the time she does spend on her bygone experiences is nuanced beyond what is usually found in contemporary poetry. Often, when poets reminisce on painful moments, they see it only for what they imagine it to be now and not how they understood it to be in the moment, and in this a vital dimension is lost. In Wilder’s case, however, it is different; she compares her musing on the lost love that made her stronger to a series finale overstaying its welcome, claiming that for as crushing as it is that it was gone, “ we both look / up, knowing it was beautiful while it / lasted.” Heartbreak is only so painful because everything before that was good and real, Wilder acknowledges, and passing time is irreversible but also vital for rebuilding one’s life. These experiences hurt–the heartbreak, her self-worth issues, and everything else she’s learning to heal from–and yet, in their prime, they were something worth celebrating. Unlike many other contemporary poets, Wilder is able to break out of the tunnel vision of only viewing experiences in 20/20 hindsight, but also as something good in the times in which they were precious to our author.

Wilder’s Golden truly embodies the saying ‘blink and you’ll miss it;’ between the subtle references to her romantic tradition in Nocturnal reworked, the invisible self-love story recording how far she has come in learning devotion to herself, and humble acceptance of the nuance in her every experience, her second celestial work is inlaid with much more luster than it lets on for those who choose to look for its light.

Golden
Wilder
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
176 pp. Pub.: November 22, 2022

Blair E. Vandehey is an Appleton-based writer, daydreamer, and lover al all things pop culture. She is currently working towards degree in Creative Writing and Political Science at Lawrence University.