“Desire in all its radical re/solve is the dancing focus and a lightning bug in Lindy Hough’s poetry history. It is the delight in her language of quest and discovery; the joy of intellect and raw nature, ‘faithful to mystery.’”
—Thurston Moore, poet and musician
North Atlantic Books is proud to announce the publication of Wild Horses, Wild Dreams: New and Selected Poems, 1971-2010 by Lindy Hough, the third title in North Atlantic’s Io Poetry Series, available TODAY wherever books are sold.
Following a trajectory from the early seventies to the present, this New and Selected Poems gives a generous overview of this American poet’s intellectual world as it probes themes of inner life, motherhood and children, materialism and capitalism, and psychic and spiritual grounding.
Linguistic nuance, surprising syntax, and a breath poetics grounded in Charles Olson’s Projective Verse are hallmarks of the poems of Lindy Hough. Wild Horses, Wild Dreams reveals why she has held a position as an integral figure in poetry, despite forsaking publication as she raised her children and founded a publishing company for some twenty years. Wild Horses opens on the narrator of Changing Woman as a young mother in her twenties immersed in the detail of life, recalling her roots in Colorado amid isolation in downeast Maine. In Psyche, the life of a Vermont college town and its inhabitants is revealed in a long poem based on H.D.’s Helen of Troy. The narrator of The Sun in Cancer examines reality in terms of Buddhism and consciousness, moving between the east and west coast. Outlands & Inlands shows dreams, dance, and obsession mapping changing human dilemmas. The New Poems continue the concern with psychic phenomena, Buddhism, and visual arts, and film, and bring new modalities—Authentic Movement, Ba Gua, bodywork.
About Io
Lindy Hough co-founded the seminal interdisciplinary journal Io, which published poets Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Gerrit Lansing and Gary Snyder, among other celebrated poets. The Io Poetry Series pays tribute to North Atlantic Books’ literary roots and honors the career work of poets who express the depth, breadth and scope of subject matter of Io and North Atlantic Books. Previous authors and works include Gerrit’s Heavenly Tree, Northern Earth and Kenneth Irby’s The Intent On, winner of the 2010 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
About the Poet
Lindy Hough is the author of five books of poetry and non-fiction, including Nuclear Strategy and The Code of the Warrior: Faces of Mars and Shiva in the Crisis of Human Survival, a collection of anti-nuclear pieces. She cofounded North Atlantic Books in the early seventies, and was Publisher and Editorial Director for many years. She lives in Berkeley, California.
For more on Lindy Hough, including a behind-the-scenes essay on the making of Wild Horses, Wild Dreams, and a schedule of upcoming events, visit her web site at www.lindyhough.com.
