Poems for Company - December 25th, 2023

"Some Horses, Some Oxen": Four poems are featured on this show, three about horses and one about oxen.  All of the horse poems tell us as much about the speaker as they do about the horses, and the final poem details a most curious Christmas folk belief.  What are all these animals thinking?  The poems are read in this order: Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself, section 32 (first published in 1855).  Maxine Kumin, "Jack," from Jack and Other Poems (W. W. Norton and Company, 2005), used by kind permission of the Maxine Kumin Literary Trust.  Robert Wrigley, "Horse Heaven," from The True Account of Myself as a Bird (Penguin, 2022), used by kind permission of the author.  Thomas Hardy, "The Oxen" (first published in 1915).  The show's theme music is Philip Aaberg's "Going-to-the-Sun," from his CD Live from Montana (available at Sweetgrassmusic.com) and used with kind permission of Philip Aaberg.