The Horse and other works by Anselm Hollo
Born in Helsinki, Anselm Hollo has been writing and teaching across the globe, with stays in Germany, Austria, London, New York, San Francisco, Iowa City, and Sweet Briar, Virginia. Since 1985 he has made his home in Boulder, Colorado where he teaches at Naropa University. An award-winning translator of German, French, and Finnish literature, he received a 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His collection of poetry Notes on the Possibilities and Attractions of Existence (Coffee House Press) received the San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 2001.
The Horse
is an animal
so is the humanthe motor car is not an animal
to the human animal
it does feel like a horsea horse that does not shit in the road
it shits in the air
breathed by both human and horse
with just possibly
more deleterious effactsbut we had fewer humans and horses
back then
75
it ain't the middle of life but I'm still
lost in the woods
Somewhere
between the cat and the tree
must be my countryand the finch
singing above usabout the world
that suffersand yearns
Who Said I Could Do This?
half a century trying
still not sure why
I tie my shoelaces funny
"THERE IS ROOM IN THE ROOM THAT I ROOM IN"
said (I believe) Ted Berrigan
and there is room in the rooms that we room in
for work and works
of artand of course myriad "objects"
needed and/or believed to be soand talk and touch and look(s)
there is room for us
who may feel large sometimes
if not downright greatbut also truly quite small
(as I told you one night)
and lovable
Cathar Death Jazz
pretty feral he was when she took him in