Horse

by James K. Baxter

Horse is almost twenty, a college drop-out with a job in a steel mill and a girlfriend named Fern with golden brown hair down to her waist. But his drinking, poetry writing, and above all a predilection for the disreputable combine to make him an outsider kicking against the conventions of a small college town in the 1940's. Horse is the only novel of James K. Baxter, New Zealand's greatest poet.

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1986

About the author

James Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society.

In his critical study Lives of the Poets, Michael Schmidt defines Baxter's 'Jacobean consonantal rhetoric'.Schmidt has claimed that Baxter was 'one of the most precocious poets of the century' whose neglect outside of New Zealand is baffling. His writing was affected by his alcoholism. His work drew upon Dylan Thomas and Yeats; then on MacNeice and Lowell. Michael Schmidt identifies 'an amalgam of Hopkins, Thomas and native atavisms' in Baxter's 'Prelude N.Z.

Reviews

[Tom Croskery · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose in “Horse” (the only novel written by New Zealand poet James K. Baxter, and published posthumously) is unsurprising poetic now and then, and has sparked in me an interest in finding and absorbing more of Baxter’s poetry.

“Horse” is billed as a fictionalised account of when Baxter was working on farms and in factories after dropping out of Otago University in the 1940s. In the afterword, Baxter describes the outcast character Horse (Timothy Harold Glass) as “my collaborator, my schizophrenic twin, who has always provided me with poems … he, or somebody rather like him, inhabited this town twenty years ago, daring to use my name and wear my features.”

The religious imagery shows, too, and presages Baxter’s somewhat turbulent religious journey. I definitely recommend this book if you’re interested in reading snapshots of New Zealand’s past.

[Max Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having already found some of Baxter’s poems both at times confusing but brilliant, his only novel Horse is one I enjoyed more than his poetry. Though it is very much still a Baxter piece of work; that being quite poetic and even lightly confusing at times, I can only wish that he’d have wrote more novels. At times, it felt a bit too focused on sex but that is far from a surprise for Baxter, though the language used is very much of the time as are the values. Overall, I enjoyed the book and how in the epilogue Baxter explains the character ‘Horse’ is almost a figure of his alter ego which explains a lot and provides insight into his life when deciding to leave university, as well as how his mind worked in terms of inspiration.

[Wyktor Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only novel James K. Baxter wrote.
I've always been a fan, since meeting him at High School in the 3rd Form, then getting invited by him to Jerusalem when I was in the 4th Form, and getting a signed copy of Jerusalem Daybook from him the same year (which my father took one look at, called him a conchie bastard, and threw the book into the fire). Unfortunately, I never made it up the Whanganui River at all.
Thoroughly enjoyed Horse.
Highly recommended.