There are also encounters of a quieter kind – a moment lingering at a field gate as horses decide whether to come over and say hello. The poems beautifully illustrate that humans and equines are always equals. We can learn as much from them as they from us.

Hobson, Geary, editor, The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature, Red Earth, 1979. A large and liquid eye… the swirl of dust around pounding hooves… these, then, are the images that move us.” – UnknownTrapezoid mastered stillness: a midnight mare, she was sternest and tallest, her chest stretched against the edges of her stall.

In this short poem about horses, Lindsay writes from the perspective of a horse longing for freedom. He discusses the setting, the hay that’s been “Heaped up for me to eat” and contrasts moments of peace with those of pain. The men beat the horse until he is “sore” and he determines that one day he’s going to “break the halter-rope / And smash the stable-door” and escape. He will run free and see the hills of corn and the rises sun as he never could before. When the Almighty put hoofs on the wind and a bridle on the lightning, He called it a horse.” – Unknown I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh it was. My very heart leapt with the sound.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne We think of a horse less as the history of one man and his sorrows than as the history of a whole evil time. Yet he remains modest about their style: “I would hate to insult the great poets and prefer to describe what I write as rhymes. There’s nothing that clever about them, but I think they reflect what racing fans feel about this sport and the memories they have of some of the great horses and races that we’ve been privileged to witness.”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 There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” – Sir Winston Churchill There is something about the relationship between man and horse that has gone on for so long and although we don’t rely on them like we used to, they are still such a part of us.” It is this love for the horses themselves that enables Birtles’ poems to transcend sporting barriers and strike a chord with any lover of animals. We who choose to surround ourselves with lives more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful aps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan. The life of a horse, often half our own, seems endless until one day. That day has come and gone for me, and I am once again within a somewhat smaller circle.” – Irving Townsend If you’ve ever looked into a horse’s eyes, you immediately know why people have loved horses for centuries. Not only are they useful for travel and farming, but it’s easy to feel connected to them. They radiate intelligence and a touch of wild.

Publishers Weekly, November 28, 1994, p. 54; April 21, 1997, p. 57; January 10, 2000, p. 58; May 22, 2000, p. 92; June 17, 2002, p. 58. The War Horse by Eavan Boland – Here, Eavan Boland presents the horse as a symbol of inner conflict.

Success!

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.

Without our horse, Foinavon would never have been heard of and one of the most enduring and replayed moments in British Racing history would never have happened.

Like ‘The Horses’ by Ted Hughes the following poems also present a similar kind of theme and talk about the beauty of the horses. 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.