Pale Horse, Easy Rider

Pale Horse, Easy Rider – New
Poems by John Senior

Published in 1992

71 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, paperback bound

Several of the poems were first published elsewhere, such as in The New Yorker, The Remnant, The Shakespeherian Rag, and The Formalist.

About the helpful “Notes” section which explains the meaning of each poem and the sometimes cryptic allusions which they contain, Senior wrote: “An editor, rejecting one of these poems, explained that he didn’t publish any modern poetry because it is written in private contexts and impossible to understand… It is difficult to be at once concise, allusive, intelligible and unpretentious. Verse demands the first, poetry the second, notes contribute to the third, but vitiate the fourth. At the risk of offending experts with the obvious and amateurs with academic claptrap, I have erred on the side of intelligibility in the followng references which are anecdotal and elucidative only, with no claim to erudition.”

John Senior was born in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1923 and grew up in rural Long Island. He obtained his BA (1946), MA (1948), and PhD (1957) in Comparitive Literature from Columbia University. Having taught at Bard College, Hofstra College, Cornell University, and the University of Wyoming, Senior moved on to the University of Kansas where, with Dennis Quinn and Franck Nelick, he established and taught in the Integrated Humanities Program. He authored three books, The Way Down and Out (1959), The Death of Christian Culture (1978), and The Restoration of Christian Culture (1983). His poems have appeared in several journals, such as The Quarterly Review of Literature, as well as those listed above.