Horse Latitudes

Publication Instance Details #1786

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

Details

Human Rights Issues	War HR & Colonisation/Colonial Legacies Terrorism/War on Terror Torture
War / Genocide Referenced	War: Global War on Terrorism War: Iraq War and Insurgency
Irish Context	Colonization and Colonial Legacy (Ireland) Specific Irish place or place-name mentioned
Languages	English
Genre	Lyric Sequence
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	This poem is a sonnet sequence comprising 19 individual poems, whose titles all refer to locations of famous battles starting with the letter B (in Ireland, Europe, China, the US, and the Middle East). The sequence's title refers to the latitudes around 30-35 degrees north and south of the equator line, where little wind and arid air used to pose problems for ships. Muldoon's sequence was written in response to the second US invasion of Iraq, Baghdad being the missing B location (whose latitude places it in the northern Horse Latitude, sometimes referred to as the Calms of Cancer). The sequence features many scenes of violence against animals, notably horses and mules. These are interlaced with battle scenes and the narrative of Carlotta, who is dying from cancer.