rendering of a mushroom (presumably an Amanita species) hovering in the air—evokes the sense of both the unearthing of the subterranean, and the untethering of the terrestrial— the existential “lightness of being” to which anyone who has worked through trauma can attest. In most of the poems, in some fashion or other, there are images of pushing up from the mycelial underworld, often, as in “Leonids,” expanding beyond to indeed embrace the “cosmic” of the book’s title. All the poems, whether focusing on the mycological or not,
incorporate the natural world and readers of “nature poetry” may hear a quiet echo or two of Mary Oliver; allusions to earth are as rich and loamy as a Seamus Heaney line; the clarion call of the feminist and modernist canons urgently ring through. Wheeler’s literary genealogy is expansive but her works are acts of creative transcendence, producing a gorgeous and enthralling collection in a voice resoundingly her own. Mycophiles will find delight and discovery in the bold, new ways of perceiving the fungal realms above and below— marvelously rendered not by the camera’s lens but deep in the mind’s eye.
We Could Be mycelial, eating toxins together, decomposing what’s still indigestible about this place. Te singed taste. Could spread our soiled hands wide, vegetate, infiltrate, collaborate. Below ground, we could grow fat on loss, bust out in the wildest shapes. Puffball. Flagellate. Our mistakes gorgeous in dispersal across polluted skies. Help me try. -Maya Han
Maya Han is the Cultural Coordinator of New York
Mycological Society (NYMS), where she founded the Myco Book Club and Myco Film Festival. She is an avid gardener, mycophile, artist, writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Te poem “We Could Be” is from Mycocosmic and printed here courtesy of the author. Tis review originally appeared in Mycophile Quarterly, the newsletter of the North American Mycological Association, and reprinted here with permission.
plants eat sunlight fungus connects them animals feast
Kirk Lumpkin California
Summer 2026 FUNGI Volume 19:2 47
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