Read Judy Lightfoot's review published in the Seattle Weekly Review in 'The Temple' There's a glimmer, a niche, and beyond - endless blue. Sentries crouched here, spying on enemy ships during the occupation.
Old photos show Japanese soldiers in Nanjing practicing bayonet drills on bound Chinese prisoners.
But the tone he adopts often has a formal, contemplative quality, a sobriety. Some of the longer poems are narratives but employ standard poetic devices. The poems in this collection reflect the ephemeral nature of time and memory, and the inevitability of loss. Each poem presents a personal utterance on the one hand and on the other reaches toward something larger - the world beyond the personal, which is the world we all inhabit. Harkness illuminates the elemental, the necessary.