I want what everybody wants, that's how I know I'm still breathing.

Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading.

Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah, and I was his ark, and there were two of every animal inside me

Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it.

We love disasters that have nothing to do with us

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.

No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.