A White Horse Is Not a Horse

Poetry

ISBN 978-1-957746-30-2

p.88

What is the texture of an identity shaped by legacies of violence? A White Horse Is Not a Horse considers multiple mythologies and locations, from the legacies of human sacrifice in the core myths of both China and the West to recent geopolitical turmoil and stubborn traces of familial hurt. In this, his second collection, Mao draws on his background in scientific research to stage a series of quarrels with himself—to use Yeats’s terminology—that are always musically and formally alert, analytic yet delicately personal.