The End of Horses

by Margot Taft Stever

Overview

Poetry addressing the need for ethical and responsible living in the face of environmental crisis.

In the title poem from this new collection from Margo Taft Stever, she writes "from the end / of the time zone" where "nothing survived / after the horses were slaughtered," a catastrophe for which no one knows whom to blame, but "The generals / and engineers pucker / and snore on the veranda." Stever thus offers up a fable of man-made ecological disaster, and in every sense her writing in this volume is fabulous. It is also in every sense the work of a mature writer, one who has lived long and witnessed much, and who has mastered her craft, here placed in the service of the environment. She devotes much concern to animals ñ including a discourse on beavers—but her primary subject is human, and her purpose to provide us with cautionary tales on the necessity of ethical living. One long poem describes the accidental (and ironic) death of a relative in a cold war era fallout shelter, closing with the observation that "He had no known enemies"—except, that is, for his own folly, recalling Walt Kelly's famous observation that when it comes to the environment, we are our own worst enemies. While it may be too late to avoid the consequences of our past environmental sins, Stever shows us a possible way forward into more harmonious and humane living in a world where there is still much beauty.

Poetry. Environment. Ecology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781956782042
Publisher:	Broadstone Books
Publication date:	04/01/2022
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.27(h) x 0.23(d)

Table of Contents

1

Galloping Double, Bareback 3

Rabbit Fever 4

Posture Pictures 5

Menarche 6

Brittle Leaves 7

Locked Ward I 8

Refuge of Constellations 9

Fertility Doctor 10

Quickening 12

Lullaby 14

House Reckoning 15

Summer Rain 16

Death, of a Grandmother 17

Menopause 18

Beloved Child 19

2

Instructions for Mother's Burial 23

Treehouse 24

Molly Sky 25

Barefoot Clearing 26

Dolls 27

Gall 29

Slug Traps 30

Birds at the Zoo 31

Rats 32

Beauty Parlor 33

Citizen's Arrest 34

Back from L.A. with the C.I.A. 35

Bomb Shelter Explosion Report 37

MIT Poetry Workshop, 1969 41

Electrolux Salesman 42

Pickpocket 44

Calling Mother After She Died 45

3

End of Horses 49

This Salt Marsh Was Once a Killing Field 50

Ghost Moose 51

Blinded 52

For I Will Consider the North American Beaver 54

Three Ravens Watch 57

Litany of the Sow 58

Locked Ward II 59

Dance of the Jackrabbit 60

Ballad of the Dolphin 61

The Nunnery 63

Locked Ward III 64

Elegy for a Blue Spruce 65

Farewell 66

Ocean Birds 68

Notes 69

Acknowledgments 70