We Never Speak of It: Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889-90

Jana Harris

We Never Speak of It starts out with a bang, as good poetry books probably should; "Crossing Lava Creek," a poem that (and I feel like this is a spoiler) describes what can only be a tornado coming out of nowhere, but doing it in such a way that it's hard to tell it's anything but an everyday storm. Just, in other words, in the voice of its eleven-year-old narrator.

What happens after this is really the deciding factor as to whether this book is or is not one of the best books of poetry I've read in the past few years, and I still haven't figured that out. Either Harris is so in tune with her subjects, and manages to use the diction in which they speak, so much that the time period in which these poems take place becomes second nature, or the poems themselves slide into the realm of the good rather than the realm of the fantastic. (The end result is the same; everything that comes after "Crossing Lava Creek" seems rather an anticlimax, even the other storms.) The difference between the two is whether it's a conscious trick of technique (as in, say, the novels of Cormac McCarthy) or whether familiarity, in this case, bred contempt. I am more than willing to give Harris the benefit of the doubt, and wouldn't have even considered the other possibility save that such a talent is so very rare; as readers of McCarthy will attest, using such a rhythm so that it is both effortless for the author and for the reader is even more rare. If that really is what's happening here (and reading a few more books by Harris, which has shot up my list of priorities as I made my way through this, should tell me if it is), then, as is becoming increasingly common in the past few years, I have uncovered another seemingly overlooked gem in the pantheon, another poet whose work is in desperate need of being read by, well, anyone and everyone. If not, it's a book chock full of good, solid work, and should be read at least by those with a liking for poetry, for history, and especially for the combination of the two.

This rating may go way up in the future.