There is Room in a Horse for the Whole Boy

There Is Room in a Horse for the Whole Boy is Barbara Saunier's deeply rooted, often startling collection of poems. With humor, precision, and unflinching clarity, she places the reader inside the textures of rural life: the callused hand, the horse in its full strength, the barn swallow's rookie mistake. These poems move between elegy and celebration, weaving grief and wonder, shock and joy, into moments that affirm the staggering, contradictory experience of being human. The collection has been praised for its courage and craft. Jack Ridl writes, "All Saunier's perceptive poems evoke and embody the constancy of our contradictory inner experience. To be confronted by these courageous poems is in the end to be strengthened." Joy Gaines-Friedler notes, "These poems hold no secrets; they offer stunning revelations of life, death, the bovine cry for her calf, the opossum that needs killing. This is a book that honors the callused hand, the whole of the horse, the laundered bed sheets, toasted cheese sandwiches." From the horse rendered into violin glue to the frozen weasel in the peas, Saunier extracts what one reviewer called "sacraments of decay" and turns them into richly rewarding song. The result is a book of strong tone and place, filled with beautifully wrought imagery that connects the reader to the natural world and the inevitabilities of death, renewal, and change.