Elizabeth Went West

Shannon Hengen is an associate professor of English at Laurentian
University and the author of Margaret Atwood’s Power: Mirrors,
Reflections and Images in Select Fiction and Poetry.

The last section of this collection of poems features an exchange of
letters between the poet and two 19th-century immigrant women, Elizabeth
Russell (whose letters Horner studied in library archives) and Susanna
Moodie. The epistolary verse clearly shows the limitations of language
as a means of achieving intimacy. At the same time, connections are
made, and the poet achieves a freshness through her thematic insights
and nondecorative but musical language.

Chief among Horner’s themes is the search for home. As much as they
aspire to take us home, our language and our stories are just as likely
to lead us away. In her search for family, the poet looks to her female
ancestors and her mother for guidance, but hears little. And yet the
lines “a new world / the surprise opening / a bright door” hold out
hope for those longed-for messages.