“Heart-Light”: a review of Denton Loving's Feller by Jake Lawson
Feller
Denton Loving
Mercer University Press, August 2025
336 pp.
Denton Loving's third collection of poetry, Feller, presents a voice that seeks light, both concrete and symbolic. Light is found in masterful imagery. Still, it's also in glimpses of symbolic light—the light shines from speakers who choose humility, good perspective, and compassion in the face of existential reckoning. Located and informed by natural settings, many of the poems in Feller search beyond geographical boundaries—you’ll find songs of memory and longing, joy, gratitude, a search for peace, and much more. By the end of reading the collection, you’ll feel as if you have made a new, dear friend, someone to laugh with, someone to offer wisdom through hard times.
Feller’s dream-themed prologue begins with a poem titled "Bluebird Dreams of Red Fox," where "the eastern sky colors / like the skin of an over-ripened peach," helping establish a neatly bound foundation to the collection's multiplicity. Nature and its spectrums are places for eating, for awe, for imagination, and introspection. The four poems in Feller's prologue build a subconscious foundation upon which rest all the poems that follow.
Divided into three sections, the poems within each grow in strength from page to page. There’s instruction in unexpected places, through juxtaposed shifts of perspective, in willingness for vulnerability, in details of earned sentiment. In the collection's third section, "How to Raise an Obelisk" tips the reader to fresh awareness: "The first trick is to recognize that ray / of light fossilized deep in the mountain." Before building monuments, we're advised to consider perspective first—to engage sensibilities that acknowledge ancient light, which is both artifact and vantage point. Loving's speakers encourage us to slow down, look at larger pictures, and cultivate vigilant awareness while also appreciating the deep past surrounding us.
Powerful works such as "Outside San Miguel" open with endearing memories that turn into bittersweet longing, the most intoxicating of poetic elixirs. The narrator lingers over and longs for past times, to intimate moments of companionship, but "Afterwards, / driving north on the interstate long after midnight," they are "searching for a reported blue moon / through drifting fog." Searching for light, yet again, they admit: "The moon never revealed itself through the mist. / No roads wound back to those mountains." Whether it be physical location or emotional space, the poem’s narrator reckons with barriers. The moonlight's absence may signal deeper reflections concerning separation, attachments to places, people, or moments no longer accessible.
In the epistolary poem, "Letter to Rilke," another voice admits "I've not yet learned to treasure locked doors, rooms / I've not been given access to. I've not yet learned to be brave in the face of the inexplicable…" Here, there’s purity, the ever-present strength of self-awareness that shines throughout Feller. In this poem, the narrator contemplates terrible loss and then shows action that may serve as a response to these "locked doors." While driving and contemplating, they turn: "Yesterday, I flashed my hazards and stopped my car / on a busy road to help a box turtle reach the other side-- / a small gesture for a species that has endured this earth / for two hundred million years—before lizards…" This act of selflessness prompts a shift in perspective, again zooming us out from the present moment of individual experience, recognizing the scope of earth’s history, modeling a choice for compassion in the face of immediate hardship.
In poems such as "The Octopus School of Poetry," the narrator affirms a message concerning octopi anatomy: "Yes, that they have three hearts is remarkable. / So too, the way they navigate man-made mazes." Readers may take special notes of this observation—to reflect on our heart’s capacity, to consider the mazes we create and endure. For the octopus, their "arms simultaneously perform / separate tasks. That they can unscrew jar lids / even when they're trapped inside the glass," our speaker marvels at the poetic "ability to squirt jets of black ink" as a tactic of self-defense. The narrator admires the creature for its resilience despite having so many hearts in a trapped space. Loving's use of the lyric "I” further clues us as to what's at stake—we might compare the octopus’ projection of ink to the endeavor of writing poetry.
We may even consider the octopus and its multitude of hearts as a symbol, a vehicle for the poems that pulse throughout Feller. The poems are like sensitive tentacles, adapting and creating strength through vulnerability—wisdom and grace are cultivated throughout, and Loving’s existential introspections emanate the light of this collection’s character. As his speakers wander through lights, I found myself wanting to slow down and be more present, to let physical surroundings inform my inner compass when navigating a heaviness of heart. The poems model a balanced variety of humanity in process of becoming: there are developments of resolve, acceptance, and playful humor. From the prologue’s dream-inspired poems to the deepest heartfelt searches in the following sections, every page of this collection is alive—you'll laugh, you'll relate, you will feel deeply, but most of all you will see the magnificent heart-light that shimmers throughout Denton Loving's voice, vision, and devotion to his craft.
Jake Lawson is an adjunct English instructor at East Tennessee State University. He currently serves as a Board member and Chair of Programs for the Poetry Society of Tennessee. He is a current member of the Johnson City Poets Collective, and his work has appeared in Town Creek Poetry, the Tennessee Voices anthology, Appalachian Places, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and the forthcoming issue of the Appalachian Journal, among other publications."