The Poetry of Horses

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Buelens, Gert, and Ernst Rudin, editors, Deferring a Dream: Literary Sub-Versions of the American Columbiad, Birkhauser (Boston, MA), 1994. In the end, we don’t know what horses can do. We only know that when, over the past thousands of years, we have asked something more of them, at least some of them have readily supplied it.” – Jane Smiley In several instances, the internal rhythm of the poem breaks. But, it breaks for the best. It reflects the sifting of pictures in the poet’s mind as if he is dreaming of the scene. This kind of writing is also called the stream-of-consciousness technique. Apart from that, the use of soft sounds like the “s”-sound makes the poem’s tone a pleasant one. The sound scheme utilized in the poem makes one feel the freshness of dawn just like the poet felt on that day. He has galloped through young girl’s dreams, added richness to grown women’s lives, and served men in war and strife.” – Toni Robinson

The Horses is a poem that was published in Ted Hughes’s first collection, “The Hawk in the Rain”, which appeared in 1957. This collection made an immediate impact on the literary world, winning a prestigious prize — judged by W H Auden, Stephen Sender and Marianne Moore — and bringing Hughes (1930–98) to public attention as a new and original voice in English poetry. Bruchac, Joseph, editor, Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1987. Editor with Gloria Bird) Reinventing the Enemy's Language: North American Native Women's Writing, Norton (New York, NY), 1997. One can get in a car and see what man has made. One must get on a horse to see what God has made.” – UnknownSwann, Brian, and Arnold Krupat, editors, I Tell You Now: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1987.

Secrets from the Center of the World, photographs by Steven Strom, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1989.

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This poem, published in 1957, may remind some readers of William Wordsworth in its focus on nature’s overwhelming impact on humans. The poet goes to the hilltop at dawn and walks down, encounteres the horses which are symbolic and central. Underlying the poem is the theme of the power of nature. The horses, in their stillness, may represent the spirit of the natural world; eternal and timeless.

When he is not scratching his brow waiting for inspiration to strike, Henry runs the “rather unimaginatively named ‘Henry Birtles Associates'”, a media rights distribution company that has just been assigned the international television rights to the Breeders’ Cup (USA). There is no regular rhyme scheme and the lines flow freely, aided by the internal rhythm and the varying length of the lines that reflect the shifting scenes. The metre is a mix of iambic — one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable — and trochaic — a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable. A horse doesn’t care how much you know until he knows how much you care. Put your hand on your horse and your heart in your hand.” – Pat Parelli Seldom did I reach the little mountain without him, the easy crests making valleys of indifferent grasses.The Australian writer and solicitor Andrew Barton Paterson (1864-1941), often known simply as Banjo Paterson, is sometimes described as a bush poet. Of Scottish descent on his father’s side, he was born near Orange in New South Wales. Financial misfortunes forced the family to move to Illalong Station, and Andrew, when old enough to ride a pony, went to the bush school in Binalong. He later attended Sydney grammar school. When Racing gets you, it gets to your very core and you want to share that with people and without forcing it, you want them to feel what you feel. I don’t write my poems with the intention of converting people. I very rarely plan them, but if they do appeal and I continue to get a good crowd to listen to the somewhat eccentric bloke blasting out rhyme, then great.” One who believes that he has mastered the art of horsemanship has not yet begun to understand the horse.” – Unknown