The Stag Head Spoke by Erina Harris
The Stag Head Spoke
Erina Harris’s debut poetry collection, The Stag Head Spoke comprises two self-contained “Books,” each possessing its own unique, musical language. Book One, “Bestiary” reinvents lyric forms derived from song, fairy tales, and traditional poetries. It explores contemporary concerns regarding animality and human identity through the destabilizing functions of nonsense verse. Book Two, “For The Suicide of Vespertine” is an experimental elegy written as a poem-play. This meditation on the suicide of a beloved friend shatters elegy beyond traditions of linearity, isolationism, and closure. Both “Books” are subtle, feminist-inflected meditations emphasizing human community in language, and animated by renewed usages of rhyme.
Wolsak and Wynn
Poetry Collection