HORSES AND THE HUMAN SOUL Poems by Judith Barrington Published by Story Line Press ISBN 1-58654-040-8, trade paperback, $14 SELECTED by the Oregon State Library for "150 Books for the Sesquicentennial" (from among books by Oregon writers, 1836 – 2009) FINALIST, OREGON BOOK AWARD "Crows" from Horses and the Human Soul, was read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac, July 3, 2006.

PRAISE for Horses and the Human Soul

“‘The poem,’ writes Judith Barrington, ‘has lodged in my heart like a stone in the shoe.” It is the perfect image for recollection. Here are the horses of her English childhood and the outbreak of World War II filtered through family reminiscence, her coming of age, the disastrous marriage and her self-acceptance as a lesbian. In the brilliant, excruciating title poem, undercover investigators watch but do not interfere as killers break the leg of a racehorse; the poet seeks to understand how savagery can coexist with intellectual detachment. When the crowbar strikes, she asks, what happens to the human soul? Her voice is lyrical, her intelligence palpable throughout this book.”
—Maxine Kumin

“In Judith Barrington’s striking collection, Horses and the Human Soul, human emotions come ushered and accompanied by animal companions, especially the horses this speaker loves. Here they are witnesses, companions to the spirit, and as vulnerably mortal as human beings. Socially and politically alert, lamenting and celebrating, Barrington’s passionate poems inscribe the broad range of her affections.” —Mark Doty

“Judith Barrington’s Horses and the Human Soul gives readers a glimpse of the powerful connections that can exist between nature and humanity and the potential for that connection to be transforming.” —Prairie Schooner

“These stunning poems find moral high ground in the world of nature and animals without falsifying that world.... The title poem is concerned with questions of responsibility and evil in the human world. Based on a true story of an insurance scam that involved criminals breaking a thoroughbred’s leg while undercover investigators watched in order to make their case, the poem asks with heartbreaking clarity: Did it occur to them then, as the man led the mare back to his friend with the crowbar, that they could stop this before it happened? How to stop wrongs before they happen is a profoundly moral question. Barrington makes powerful poetry of that question.” —Barbara Drake, Calyx
full review

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LISTEN to the author read from Horses and the Human Soul:

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Available from The Eighth Mountain Press, 624 SE 29th Avenue, Ptld, OR 97214; 503/233-3936; ruth@eighthmountain.com.