HORSES IN THE BACKYARD
by JOHN SEPICH
Internationally recognized for his scholarly NOTES ON BLOOD MERIDIAN, John Sepich brings readers to a quite different side of his writings in HORSES IN THE BACKYARD, a remarkable collection of dozens of short stories from Sepich’s decade and a half of caring for horses at a boarding stable in rural central Illinois.
Early reviewers of HORSES IN THE BACKYARD all agree that it is a fun, unique read. Each story can stand alone, but like a book of poems on a central theme, the compilation enriches the individual focus of each one.
Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein writes: “The eye serves as agent of John Sepich’s wonderful HORSES IN THE BACKYARD. A thread of light stitches eye to head to heart to pragmatic fact, a luminous fabric woven by dint of daily attention and repetition. From horses Sepich knows labor but knows as well revelation. Work is work, the saying goes, but so is epiphany.”
John Sepich says, “There must be ten thousand picture books of horses, but every horse is frozen on the page. Here, the horses are in motion. There must be even more books on breaking and training and riding. Here, and from where I stand, the horses are more important than the people. I wasn’t raised in the country. I wasn’t raised with horses. But after fifteen years of experience these stories would be my answer to a number of questions. What’s it like to live in the country with horses? What are the horses like? Is it a lot of work? What are the seasons like? What kinds of things happen? Where are the satisfactions?”
Some stories are informational or precautionary, like advice on how to keep one’s foot out from under the horse’s. Others give insight into the day-to-day working life of a stable, plenty of chores and the moments between chores. But all are fascinating, all with the sense of a person discovering a world, drawing attention to that moment when the ordinary becomes sublime, where the simplest act of releasing horses into a pasture, or mowing pastures in the afternoon crosses that invisible line and the mundane turns beautiful. On the surface it may be about horses, but it is also about “Dogs and cats and snakes and mice, hawks and sparrows, hot summers and cold winters, wind and fires and rain and snow and clay mud, all in the bargain.”
Kevin Stein adds: “Marked by understatement and the sly aside, there’s nothing grandiose here. There’s only one man’s genuinely seeing the creatures with whom he shares a world, each bordered by time and natural cycle as is he. Snowflakes mingle with bucketed water, snakes slither amid uncut grass, a horse’s nostrils snuffle his open palm. These things mark his earthly horizon, evanescent but redemptive. Like the tiny barn bird wind-poised above his left shoulder, Sepich’s eyes ‘see everywhere,’ the two of them ‘looking out for a time over the same world.’ This book’s gift is to reveal that world as richly figured and vivifying.”
All of these things and more, HORSES IN THE BACKYARD is a highly recommended choice, engaging and entertaining the first time through, and the fifth time, and the fifteenth.
