Equus Caballus

by Eric Basso

Horses, portraits, underground machinery coalesce into a subterranean mystery of strange import.Equus Caballus first appeared in the West Coast review Asylum in 1975, this is its first appearance in the UK.Eric Basso is an American writer, author of many plays, essays, and an unpublished novel. His shorter texts were collected in The Beak Doctor, Europa Media, Alabama, published in 1987

22 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1991

About the author

Eric Basso was born in Baltimore in 1947. His work has appeared in Asylum Annual, Bakunin, Central Park, Chicago Review, Collages & Bricolages, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, and many other publications. His novel, Bartholomew Fair, is available from Asylum Arts. He is the author of twenty-one plays. His critically acclaimed drama trilogy, The Golem Triptych; the complete short plays, Enigmas; his play The Sabbatier Effect; a book of short fiction, The Beak Doctor; and five collections of poetry, Accidental Monsters, The Catwalk Watch, The Smoking Mirror, Catafalques, and Ghost Light, are available from Asylum Arts, along with Decompositions: Essays on Art & Literature 1973-1989 and Revagations: 1966-1974, the first volume of a book of dreams. Basso's most recent previous collection of poems, Earthworks, was published by Six Gallery Press in 2008.

Reviews

[Axolotl · Rating 4 out of 5]

An oblique story told with various techniques: fractured-narrative, tape-transcript and descriptions of various artworks in the mode of gallery explications. It sort of reminded me of the story by Cordwainer Smith about a horse roaming free among glacial landscapes--or did I simply imagine/dream that?
Then Basso's work repeatedly prompts the reader to question themselves in this way: what is the divide between dream, confabulation and reality?

[Nate D]

Though I have a copy of this, it is missing pages(?!) so I've read it, instead, collected in The Beak Doctor: Short Fiction 1972-1976. In any event, it's great.