Contents
Foreword
Preface
I. Antiquity
The First Horse Prayer, Theodore Enslin
from “Burial of the Minnisink,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
With the Flesh Remaining, Jean Monahan
Two Horses, W.S. Merwin
from “Cuchullin in His Chariot,” Ancient Erse Legend
The Myth: Raison d’Être, Pattiann Rogers
From Dread in the Eyes of Horses, Tess Gallagher
Horses and Men in Rain, Carl Sandburg
II. Here, Now
Hard Foaling, Michael List
Young Horses! Young Horses! Paul Boldt
All through the Rains, Gary Snyder
The Grace of Geldings in Ripe Pastures, Maxine Kumin
After Rain, David Baker
Equus, C.E. Greer
Bareback, William Hathaway
After the X-Ray, Alison Brakenbury
[Terrible], Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Dawn Feeding, Leslie Ullman
from “Horse Sense,” William Hathaway
Amanda Dreams She Has Died and Gone to the Elysian Fields, Maxine Kumin
Healing the Mare, Linda McCarriston
Old Lilacs, Ted Kooser
At Grass, Philip Larkin
Thinking of Death and Dogfood, Maxine Kumin
Yellowjackets, Yusef Komunyakaa
Names of Horses, Donald Hall
An Elegy on the Death of Dobbin, the Butterwoman’s Horse, Francis Fawkes
Elegy with a Bridle in Its Hand, Larry Levis
III. Essence
Horses Graze, Gwendolyn Brooks
A Blessing, James Wright
The Sorrel, Roger Pfingston
Horses, Vizma Belsevica
You Can Lead a Horse to Water, Jean Monahan
Two Horses Playing in the Orchard, James Wright
The Horsemen, David Wagoner
The Judas-Horse, David Baker
The Bronco That Would Not Be Broken, Vachel Lindsay
The Appaloosa, Michael S. Weaver
Sending the Mare to Auction, Jana Harris
Horse, Jason S. Greer
Horses, Pablo Neruda
Horses in the Lake, Pablo Antonio Cuadra
from “The Golden Ode,” Imru al-Qays
Piano, Stanley Plumly
Feeding Horses, C.E. Greer
from “If Poetry Were Not a Morality,” Tess Gallagher
Sonnet to Orpheus, 1:20, Rainer Maria Rilke
Horse, Anne Sexton
White Horses, Claude Wilkinson
IV. Harnessed
The White Stallion, Umayyah Ibn Abi Salt
Say This of Horses, Minnie Hite Moody
Horse Description, Labid ibn Rabi ah
The Battle of Lake Regillus, Thomas Babington Macaulay
from “Horses and Prisoners,” James Dickey
Battle, Aleksandr Tkachenko
The Ballad of a Blind Pit Horse, Paul Zech
The Klipsan Stallions, Linda Bierds
The Trail Horse, David Wagoner
The Horse, William Carlos Williams
The Morning Track, Edward Parone
Morning Workout, Babette Deutsch
Polo Ponies Practicing, Wallace Stevens
The Horse-Pulling, May Sarton
Bronco Busting, Event #1, May Swenson
Stewball, Irish Folk Song
Phaeton, Robin Becker
Two Horses, Roger Pfingston
V. Mirrors
Morning Once More, Joy Harjo
There Are Two Worlds, Larry Levis
Horses, Murilo Mendes
She Had Some Horses, Joy Harjo
i once knew a man, Lucille Clifton
The Summer of the Watergate Hearings, Maxine Kumin
Blue Cloud Rides Horses, Edgar Silex
In the Nursing Home, Jane Kenyon
Grazing Horses, Kay Ryan
Ice Horses, Joy Harjo
from “The Horse Fair,” Robin Becker
On Looking at Stubbs’s “Anatomy of the Horse,” Edward Lucie-Smith
Neon Horses, Dorianne Laux
Horse in Amsterdam, after Rembrandt, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Horse Collage, Jenny Kander
Caballos, Lola Haskins
The Horse in the Drugstore, Tess Gallagher
[Don’t let that horse], Lawrence Ferlinghetti
VI. Lenses
Dream Horses, Nancy Willard
Southern Horses, Xi Chuan
We Are Riding, Rajzel Zychlinsky
Horse in the Cage, Stanley Plumly
White Horse of the Father, White Horse of the Son, William Pitt Root
Naked Boys on Naked Ponies, Pattiann Rogers
The Triangular Field, Stephen Dobyns
The Dusk of Horses, James Dickey
Horsehair Insulation, Jean Monahan
from “Sitting in a Small Screenhouse on a Summer Morning,” James Wright
Ponies, Lauris Edmond
The Horse, W. S. Merwin
Pegasus, Varlam Shalamov
Horses, W. S. Merwin
The Thunder of Silence, Mihai Ursachi
Contributors
Permissions
Index