Horse and Rider: Poems

Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry

by Melissa Range, Robert A. Fink (Introduction)

Horse and Rider takes its title from a passage in the book of Exodus: “Sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has cast into the sea.” Melissa Range’s poems explore violence and power, particularly as those concepts relate to religion and to the natural world. Her mixture of free and formal verse is populated with warriors, weapons, animals, and figures from the Bible and mythology. In a galloping triptych of ancient and apocalyptic visions, these vigorous poems probe the recurring image of the horse and its sometimes troubled, sometimes loving relationship with its rider.

Genres: Poetry, Religion

88 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Melissa Range is the author of Scriptorium, a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2016), and Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010). She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She teaches creative writing and American literature at Lawrence University in Wisconsin and blogs about American literature pedagogy.

Reviews

[Terry Perrel]

Melissa Range transforms myths, Biblical and others, into metaphorical poetry and hymns rich in images and lyricism in ways few other poets can. This is a book to buy and keep and reread.

[Daniel Klawitter]

"The Rope" is one of the best persona poems ever written in English.


They put a noose in me—a knot, a nook
for a neck to go through. Not just any neck,

but almost any neck of the woods:
north and south, west and east.

Not just one race, though one race
more than others; not just one supposèd crime,

though rapists sell more papers than kidnappers,
union organizers, seditionists, or cattle thieves.

Not just men, though mostly men. I have held
the breath of women, too, and children,

whose necks are supple, who struggle more,
who twitch the longest, because they harbor hope.

I nick the quick right out of ’em. I try
to do it swiftly, and I can, if the knot’s made fast.

Sometimes they’re dead—burned, bullet-pricked,
beaten to death with shovels or with bricks—

before they get to where I’ve been uncoiled:
a cedar, a bridge, a telephone pole.

Sometimes a crowd takes strands of me
for souvenirs. In another life of rope,

I bound saints to the stake.
Twine wasn’t made for this. I should be baling hay.

I’d rather pull a bucket from a well,
haul a rowboat to a dock, give an acrobat a path

across the air. That’s a kinder life for a piece of string.
I’d like to rig a mast up, and hear the sailors sing.

Take me from this limb, or if you keep me here,
tie me to an old tire, and let the children swing.

[Cheri Johnson]

Melissa Range’s work is fierce and keening. She uses every tool a poet has on hand to magnificent effect (from “Green Darner”: “Skywriter, skycutter, predator/ decoding the lake-rings/ with your spyglass eyes”), and when she takes on an idea, she wrestles it all the way to the ground. The second section of the book, titled “Warhorse,” is probably my favorite, because no one can do personification like Melissa Range. Each poem takes on the voice of a weapon, from “The Arrow” (“I’m the bird superlative, and you’re for the worms”) to “The Rope,” who describes how “They put a noose in me” but glories not in its unwilling participation in subjugation and death. The rope mourns:
…
Twine wasn’t made for this. I should be baling hay.

I’d rather pull a bucket from a well,
haul a rowboat to a dock, give an acrobat a path

across the air. That’s a kinder life for a piece of string.
I’d like to rig a mast up, and hear the sailors sing.

Take me from this limb, or if you keep me here,
tie me to an old tire, and let the children swing.

[Sarah]

Gorgeous attention to language and story. Every poem in the book is well-crafted and deserving of multiple reads.

[Marianne Mersereau]

I've notice that very few modern day poets incorporate end rhymes in their poems so it was enjoyable to see several in this collection, and the musicality of the poems in general is wonderful.

[Laura]

Not for me, though I loved the themes.

[Amy]

I step aside and let Range's rhyme and meter skills pass far, far ahead of me. She is an old master. I offer The Black Foal by way of any review I could muster:

She'll be buried today, or one day.
Beneath the dark barn's rutted boards, the foal,
untimely dropped, shudders, puddled in the hay,

black ink soaking a bleak gold floor. His lullay
naysaying the killing air, the crickets' toll,
my father tends the foal all night, all day,

permitting the joints in his knees to fray.
Spilling mare's milk from a syringe, he tries to cajole
the foal into drinking, into rising from her plot of hay:

Aw, c'mon, now, darlin'. That ain't no way
to be. Black flies blot her hide; her eyes roll.
He's her mare, her sire, her nursemaid, and her day-

star, a vague gold haze dimming ray by ray
into the grass she'll never eat, the knoll
dying blade to bale in the cradle of hay

where the foal gives my father her last bray
to bear until his flesh is clay. Unless coal,
grass, or stars, we will all be buried on day.
May we all be buried in golden hay.

And my other favorite, from the series of poems in which weapons speak, The Arrow:

Bonnie boy, I'll get beneath your bodice:
I'm the bodkin that flies broad and lodges deep.
Armor up: I'm aiming for your codpiece
with my beak. Your mail's a lattice I'll peep

right through. Think you're safe with your spiky mace?
While you're busy braining your opponent,
I'm darting toward the undefended space
between your breastplate and your helmet.

You don't even notice. You'll say I'm no bird,
but I can peck you to the death, can pock
your fledgling flesh with eggs of blood.
You'll fleck the field like the rest of your flock.

You can't match stick and feather with your arms.
I'm the bird superlative, and you're for the worms.

[Zach]

I wouldn't be surprised if Melissa Range becomes one of our new premier poets. With her first book, Horse and Rider, she has offered some of the best poetry I have ever read. The world that Range constructs is a world hewn from blood and sinew, where the horse and rider gallop past weapons with stories to tell and young maids sing songs of dead warriors, and though there is death, there is the chance of life, of redemptiton and renewal, a noose refashioned into a child's swing, a canary's silence serving as an alarm and an apocalyptic vision subtly morphs into a decleration of love. Wonderful, alarming, beautiful.

[Barbara Brannon]

Stunning poems that lend new layers of meaning to the Old Testament scripture: "Sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has cast into the sea." Range is a 'maker' of poems in the ancient sense -- an emerging talent to be watched.
(Full disclosure: I handle marketing and promotions for the publisher of this title. But I post reviews only of those titles I've read and appreciated--and want my friends to read too!)

[LeeAnn Derdeyn]

Melissa Range is a new, young vibrant poet whom I met at the Stark Creative Writers series at the University of Dallas Fall '09. She recently won a 1st book award from Texas Tech and this is her maiden effort. Her poetry is technically deft, lyrical and threaded with references to our Western canon. In person, she is funny, has a pronounced Tennessee (is this right?)drawl, and sprinkles lots of colloquial expressions thruout. Interesting poet from whom I think we'll be hearing lots more soon.

[Grace Makley]

This book contains many, many poems that just make me shiver when I'm done with them. Absolute quality. Every word is perfect. Range references the bible, the illiad, the anglo-saxon poem The Wanderer, and does it all with finesse, rhythm, and feeling. This is the best modern poetry I have ever read.

[Eddy]

Outstanding! Rarely have I encountered such rhythm, music of language, and depth of meaning in a poet's first book.

[Pamela]

Read this book--aloud. It's magnificent.

[Jennifer Goyne]

Interesting..

[Cary]

Ranger. A collection of poems that will buck you.

[Tales and Tomes]

Awesome beyond reproach.