10 Moons and 13 Horses

by Short, Gary

• ISBN13: 9780874175837
• ISBN10: 0874175836
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nevada Pr

Summary

Gary Shortrs"s new collection is the work of a mature poet at the peak of his powers, confident of his ability to speak of human betrayal and the fragility of life without bitterness or cheap sentiment, to find poignancy in loss and exaltation in the outwardly mundane. His voice is lyrical, tough, and capable of touching us profoundly. Short knows Nevadars"s austere landscape, its ephemeral beauty, and its stoic people as few writers in any genre do. He also understands the complexities of the human soul and the contradictions of love. So he tells of how his mother, dying of cancer, revisits a day thirty years in the past when her sons trapped a trout and kept it in their fatherrs"s horse trough and how now, in her mindrs"s eye, she carries the boxed-in fish to the stream to release it, "a moment/of having, not loss." And of how the feathers of a dead owl in a long-dead oak tree have blown loose, "caught and leafed out/from each taloned twig and limb . . . each feather/a separate flight, shining to live."

Author Biography

Gary Short is the author of 10 Moons and 13 Horses and Flying Over Sonny Liston, the latter winning the Western States Book Award for Poetry in 1996. He has been a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Short has taught at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and at Old Dominion University in Virginia. He currently divides his time between Virginia City, Nevada, and Panajachel, Guatemala.

Table of Contents

1
Outlines	3	(2)
Brothers Playing Catch on Christmas Day	5	(1)
I Lay My Brother Down	6	(1)
Aperture	7	(2)
Ghost Dance	9	(3)
Junk Cars: Mina, Nevada	12	(1)
Command	13	(2)
Breath	15	(1)
Imperfect History	16	(1)
Sway	17	(2)
I Kneel to See the Dead Great Horned Owl	19	(6)
2
Herida de Amor	25	(2)
Then I Close My Eyes	27	(1)
Release	28	(3)
What I Believed	31	(2)
American Flat	33	(1)
Nesting	34	(2)
Perseid Shower	36	(1)
Magpies in the Graveyard	37	(1)
Teaching Poetry to 3rd Graders	38	(5)
3
Sheep and Stars	43	(8)
4
Frame Blue	51