Seeing Things
By Marjorie Maddox
Wildhouse Publishing, 95 pages
Published February 28, 2025
“Let’s utter lies to each other/until they’re true,” Marjorie Maddox says to a childhood friend who phones while she is “writing the pain of my daughter.” One of many powerful poems in a new collection, “Suicide Drafts” speaks to the power of language and family as two moms manifest their daughters’ recoveries by writing down small joys and memories.
Seeing Things is a collection that engages all stages of life; its author cares for her mother (who struggles with dementia) and her daughter (who’s experiencing depression). Watching their challenges brings clarity to her own life, and Maddox’s look inward and backward reveals new truths.
The phrase “seeing things” implies hallucinations or the imaginary, but Maddox’s poems hint at memories that are all too real yet painful enough to conceal. Early poems whisper of abuse, as though their author is not quite ready to speak the unspeakable, yet with each composition, Maddox gains confidence. Some truths remain hidden: “The person? Does it matter? The hand? The right one. … And where were the others? That information is unavailable.” Other truths are certain: “It was dark and it hurt,” she writes in “Details.”
Maddox turns her hard-earned wisdom on herself, lamenting the past and celebrating her survival. She moves from tentative to open-hearted healing, inviting us to join her as she shouts, “Enough of the lamentations/ Open the window and sing!”
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