Bruchac, Joseph, editor, Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1987.

A critically-acclaimed poet, Harjo’smany honors include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets,the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award. She has received fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation. In 2017 she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize in Poetry.You try to do the best with what you’ve got and ignore everything else. That’s why horses get blinders in hose racing: You look at the horse next to you, and you lose a step.” – Jimmy Lovine

My company specialises in spreading the word [about racing] through television. This is what I do for a living, with the poetry as a side-line. I write a handful [of poems] every year and do not take it particularly seriously. After my family, the job – running a media consultancy – comes first, second and third.” Seldom did I reach the little mountain without him, the easy crests making valleys of indifferent grasses. The author of this poem is unknown, but it’s one of the most popular horse poems, about the joy of owning a young horse but also the pain of losing the horse when it’s still a small foal. It’s likely to bring a tear to the eye of any horse-fan.

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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. Trapezoid mastered stillness: a midnight mare, she was sternest and tallest, her chest stretched against the edges of her stall. In recent times she has proved prolific, continuing to write, tour and record, curating the Meltdown festival, collaborating with Philip Glass and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and pursuing her great love for photography. She has even, it seems, made some sort of peace with religion – invited last year by Pope Francis to play the Vatican Christmas concert in Rome. Asked whether she had reconsidered the position she set out so strikingly in that opening lyric from Horses, she was equally uncompromising. “Anyone who would confine me to an old line,” she said, “is a fool.” Potted profile Horses and Men in the Rain by Carl Sandburg – In this poem, Carl Sandburg talks about horses and their resemblance to men. Norwood, Vera, and Janice Monk, editors, The Desert Is No Lady: Southwestern Landscapes in Women's Writing and Art, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1987.

The Horses’ by Ted Hughes presents the appearance of the horses after sunrise. The stillness was still there but the manifestation had changed. They were then steaming and glistening for the first heat of sunrise. It appeared to the poet that the horses were being washed by the sunlight. Moreover, last night’s snow around their legs had started to melt and formed a thaw due to the sunrise. With the musical repetition of the phrase “Let us sit” Sandberg speaks on collects images of mundane life. They are made beautiful through his use of language and the way in which he’s able to collect each. He wants to draw the reader’s attention to the “golden days,” and “all the olden golden men who rode horses in the rain”. The horses are part of an image of the past that, in this moment at least, Sandburg wants to celebrate. The Horses’ by Ted Hughes is a free verse poem. The lines of the poem are divided into several couplets but the lines in the couplet don’t rhyme. The flow of the poem sustains by the use of repetitions and internal rhythm. The contraction and elongation of the lines reflect the movements and shifting of scenes. However, the poet employs both the iambic meter and the trochaic meter in the poem. There are also a few variations in the poem. As an example, in the first line, “dawn dark” contains two stressed syllables. This foot forms a spondee. A stubborn horse walks behind you, an impatient horse walks in front of you, but a noble companion walks beside you.” – Unknown Keller, Lynn, and Cristanne Miller, editors, Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1994.

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The Spiral of Memory (interviews), co-edited with Laura Coltelli, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1996. Ted Hughes’s early poetry largely — but not exclusively — featured the natural world, particularly that of the Yorkshire moors near where he grew up. Much of it presented the violence of nature, expressed in dramatic language, so The Horses is something of a contrast to poems such as the title poem The Hawk in the Rain and Pike (which is not in this collection). The Poem No wonder knights in medieval times wanted the biggest, most beautiful stallion to carry them into battle. In the next few lines, the tranced mind of the poet cajoled his legs in a manner that he stumbled. It seems like something deep inside his heart couldn’t let him go. At last, the poet descended from the bosom of the “kindling tops” and came to the horses for a closer view. for there is no other feeling in the world to compare with it if one loves a great horse. It gives a thrill that nothing else ever can. It cannot be put into words, because words cannot express it.” – Samuel Riddle

When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.” – William Shakespeare To understand the soul of a horse is the closest human beings can come to knowing perfection.” – UnknownSpecially commissioned to celebrate the chalk horses carved into the Wiltshire hills, ‘The White Horses’ contains the coinage ‘leucippotomists’ – fans and students of the white horses carved into the landscape. This poem isn’t easily found online, but it is included within the Prezi presentation (publicly available) which we’ve linked to above. Browse through our collection of poems at 1Love Poems for your next writing inspirations and ideas, and have your readers talking about the themes that you love. I sometimes feel like petitioning Aintree to re-name the Foinavon Fence, the Popham Down; after all it was him that created the spectacle, the endless replay opportunities for broadcasters, the history and of course, immortality for the winner! However, I saw Teddy Grimthorpe [racing manager to Prince Khalid Abdullah] recently and he had been surprised to hear something about the Breeders’ Cup contract, saying ‘I thought you were just a wandering poet!’ so I think I really need to start working on my corporate image a bit more to dispel that notion!” A horse is the projection of peoples’ dreams about themselves – strong, powerful, beautiful – and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.” – Pam Brown