Drawing Down a Daughter

Anne Burke is the editor of the Prairie Journal Press.

Following Travelling to Find a Remedy and The Conception of Winter,
Harris finds inspiration for this feminist fable in Song of Solomon 1:
4, specifically, “Draw me,” and 1: 5, “I am black, but comely, O
ye daughter of Jerusalem.” The lineage of grandmother, mother, to
unborn daughter is “to live is to dream the self / to make a fiction /
this telling i begin / you stranded in landscape of your time / will
redefine shedding my tales / to grow your own / as i have lost our
ancestors your / daughters will lose me.”

The mental landscapes shift from Canada to Africa to the Caribbean.
Harris invokes the lamentations of Job and prepares her own prayer poem.
The line is variable and fluid throughout, incorporating song in the
concrete elements of poetry, as well as narrative and conversations in
standard prose and punctuation.

Harris is always a courageous writer, accepting challenges and taking
risks. She is able to bring the reader into the locus of her world.
These are only glimpses, admittedly, but cumulative in their power. As
she writes, “i search for the language to bind / you forever.”