Blue Horses

This is the first book I have read by this poet even though I have been inspired to write by individual poems of hers before. I knew that she focusses on a number of different concerns, not just nature and animals but also thoughts on mortality, passion, loss. This is a late collection which includes all of these themes along with some of a very different sort which all come through her facility with poetic expression. The diction is easy on the ear most of the time but will throw in a slightly unusual choice of words at a spot where a pause needs to go, such as when the poem takes a turn. What can I say about the devastating closing lines some of these have? It feels as if the author relishes having a reader reset their conceptions and have to start over again when these happen, a neat trick. Then there are the pieces which come off as straight rhapsodies climbing up on one single mood all the way through, just deepening at the end. The author was a well-regarded teacher for a long time who I think knew her audience well and how they read.

The title comes from a painting by Franz Marc in the early part of the twentieth century. It serves as the occasion of one of the poems collected here.