I really liked this collection. These are powerful, deeply personal and political poems about being a woman, being someone from a group which has historically been oppressed and has experienced enormous generational trauma, and also about being alive. The title poem is quite famous, but the ‘horses’, which reappear in many of the poems, can mean a lot of different things. Women's poetry from the 1970s and 80s is🔥
Joy Harjo, 'She Had Some Horses' (1983)
IT NEVER SEEMED WRONG TO LOVE YOU, IT’S JUST THAT WE WERE HERONS by Lynn Finger It never seemed wrong to love you, but I think we knew it wasn’t a fit. Still, we pitch a rocky tent in the sugar pines outside of I-40. You try to build the fire with a flint that makes weak sparks. I finally fumble the matches. We couldn’t have been any more awkward if we tried. I did tell you my unspoken fear, that I am a heron, evicted from their lake. You say, with knife-edged beak, how so. Not so touchable as your blue feathers, but in every mouth, every eye, there’s a lake moving and we’re herons, we fly over it, haven’t you noticed? We seek comfort and home. You shake droplets from your down, as you aren’t sure. I look at you and say, then we all soar like wandering … chop! chop! read more!
Mair Rigby
NJPOET