Fresh Horses

In this attentively-crafted first book of poems, Gary Lemons moves the reader through interior landscapes rich with loves and losses, unafraid to make the artist's exhaustive ride between inspiration and action, unable to walk away from history.

Rooted in an Ethos of working with his hands—from building grain elevators with a crew of Lakota Sioux, to re-foresting clearcuts with a cooperative of artists—Lemon's many lives fall together seamlessly in his writing. Evoking the Pacific Northwest to Costa Rica, the Black Hills to Vietnam, Fresh Horses resonates with compassion for reader and subject, and with spiritual practice made from the act of witness.

Ultimately, these are love poems that unabashedly make us aware that we are evolving not away from but toward one another.

Gary Lemons

Gary Lemons has been an ironworker, carpenter, tree planter, logger, crane operator, fruit picker, documentary videographer, and arts educator. His poems have been published widely in literary journals, including Paris Review, Iowa Review, Kayak, and Willow Springs, anthologized in Dalmo'ma, and recorded on the CD Arisen. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington, where he manages PTTV, the community television station.

Reviews

These are curiously memorable love poems through which phantoms range . . . and powerful stark speeches rise from these beings. Gifted poets like Gary Lemons are important because witnessing is what they do.

—Norman Dubie

"I walk to the edge of everything I fear," Gary Lemons writes. I admire his deep engagement with this country's history, and the sophistication of his ear. His gifts are many and welcome.

—Sam Hamill

Ordering Information

To purchase Fresh Horses by Gary Lemons, please contact our distributor, University Press of New England toll free at 1-800-421-1561 or by fax at 1-603-448-9729. The book is also available online at UPNE, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine retailers.

To request a copy for review, please contact the Carnegie Mellon University Press Editorial Offices at (412) 268-2861 or by email at CarnegieMellonUniversityPress@gmail.com.