Horses fascinate us. Whether you know horses or not, the sheer size of them, their energy, grace and personality are a compelling force. The Heart of the Horse, Rhinebeck photographer Juliet van Otteren's new book, explores that fascination and takes it to a visual level that will attract anyone who has an appreciation for shape, texture, form, and the photographic depiction of power.

This beautiful book would do anyone's coffee table proud—horse person or not. It's a substantial presentation of almost 80 black and white images, complemented by four beautifully written essays by Alan Lightman and a foreword by Jane Goodall.

Lightman's words wander around the subject of humans, animals, and their shared environments, barely touching on horses. His role is to encourage us to open our eyes and to observe and absorb; he does it gently and well.

Van Otteren's photographs challenge us by putting us nearer to these magnificent beasts than most of us will ever get. The pictures of horses in motion are intimidating, emanating raw energy. Manes wildly askew, ears back, teeth bared, hooves flying—and we're so close, uncomfortably close! There's an urge to back away and observe all that power from a safer distance. Then there are other photographs that glorify equine shapes and textures. Van Otteren draws us into a tender moment between a mare and foal; includes us as two young horses nuzzle each other after a rough game; catches a dapple-grey quizzically eyeing the camera at close range.

These are images of horses absent of humans, but they are not pastoral scenes of animals running across a beautiful field. The environment is virtually invisible as van Otteren explores the forms created by black, white, gray, and spotted horses. These photos are studies in light and shadow, curves and lines, finding odd angles that magnify an eye, a hipbone, or even the hairs on a horse's coat. Some of the images border on the abstract, and that's what Lightman's essays are really about. They ask you to receive the words and images in The Heart of the Horse, encourage us to be active observers on many levels—textural, spiritual, and with the heart. They invite us to feel what stirs inside of us when we allow ourselves to examine.

Stillness. Simplicity. Mindfulness. Spontaneity. All are creative virtues that have been energized by the migration of Zen Buddhist practice and teaching to the West. For John Daido Loori, author of The Zen of Creativity and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, these virtues are the fruits of a spiritual and artistic tree for which Zen meditation (zazen) is the root. Whether it is the ability to get out of the way and let art create itself, to be totally present with one's subject, or to identify and overcome barriers to our own creative flow, zazen is the key.

This volume describes how practice of "the artless arts of Zen"—tea ceremony, bamboo flute, ceramic arts, Noh drama, and landscape gardening—can be used to experience and communicate profound spiritual insights. Painting, calligraphy, poetry, and the study of seemingly paradoxical questions, or koans, are also used extensively in getting the reader to acknowledge one simple fact: that we are all complete beings, lacking absolutely nothing. Making this fact visible is the primary concern of every creative practice, whether it be on the meditation cushion or on the stage.

To the rich collage of images and stories making up this book, the author brings his own personal contribution of a life spent photographing the natural world. Anyone who has ever viewed the absolutely stunning photographs of John Daido Loori—an experience to which the reproductions in this volume frankly do not do justice—knows that the results of this teacher walking his talk are a true blend of the aesthetic and the spiritual ideals alluded to on every page. Rare is the opportunity to read the unfiltered words of a master so often successful in his visual attempts to express the inexpressible.

America Needs a Buddhist President, written by Brett Bevell with strong, simple brushstroke illustrations by Eben Dodd, is essentially a 200-word, light-hearted polemic, but like all polemics, it is designed to provoke and to raise questions. Do we really need another president ignoring the press? What kind of person not worried about appearance meticulously shaves his head every morning? Does Tibet need a Christian president? Is it insulting to suggest so? Not many texts made up entirely of declarative sentences can raise ire as well as a smile.

Of all the interpreters of that famous life lived some 2000 years ago, perhaps none was more influential than Paul, the man whose famous conversion on the road to Damascus transformed a tentmaker and ambitious young Pharisee into a powerful advocate for a fledgling sect that would change the world.

Bard professor Chilton delves into historical and scholarly sources to paint a vivid picture of Paul and the times and controversies that swirled around him. He puts Paul's many passionate letters to the various congregations of early Christians into fascinating context against a backdrop of a time when Roman paganism, Judaism, and controversies over the interpretation of Jesus' message swirled around the ancient world in a heady broth. He offers intriguing insights into how Paul's part of the New Testament came to be so focused on sexual mores.

Time may have resulted in Paul's beatification, and certainly his contribution to spreading the news of an immanent, transcendent God was beyond compare. But this exploration of the gritty realities of life in the first century makes it clear that the authorities of the time—and even some of his fellow apostles—considered Paul anything but a saint. He was repeatedly arrested and beaten, once even crushed with a large rock and left for dead.

Physically an unprepossessing man, plagued with health problems, Paul's ambition was equaled only by the strength of his convictions. Controversial, cantankerous, a powerful writer and a deep thinker, Rabbi Paul comes across as profoundly human and touched by a destiny he strove mightily to live up to. Issues such as circumcision, idolatry, and to what extent Christ's followers needed to embrace other aspects of Mosaic law were the hot button issues of their day, and Paul threw himself into the mix, at times making friends and at other times getting run out of town in disgrace. Gaining adherents and raising money in a time when being a Christian could be a death sentence was no job for the lazy or the faint of heart, and Paul was neither.

Chilton neither idolizes nor underrates this influential thinker or his era, and brings those strange and heady times to life so that we recognize the humanity in lives that have long since become the stuff of myth. If you like your saints anemic and idealized, skip this one; for those who'd really like to know what was going on, it's a thought-provoking gold mine.

Every book of poems, I have noticed, has a sparrow in it. (Why do I notice? Because that is my name.) Stroking The Sparrow's Tail has the sparrow directly in the title.

In the title poem, a sparrow has flown into a hall full of "roughneck welders and machinists." The bird is lost and confused, smashing into a window. Arthur Joseph Kushner reaches out and catches the sparrow: "He did not resist / But surrendered to the spontaneous compassion." Kushner saves the sparrow (me), for which I must thank him.

This is a book much concerned with historical time—with what we learn from the past and the legacy we pass to our children, nieces and nephews. "Heal the Family" contains two sections: one about Arthur's Sicilian grandparents and one about his Jewish grandparents. (The book includes photographs of three of them.) "Prophets Awake" addresses his descendants in future centuries reciting his poems: "Rise up and be a clone / And sing the songs of former times."

In "Cicadas," he measures his life by the 17-year generations of cicadas: "It was a summer more than half / my life ago / when I heard the preceding generation / of your kind... / They were my elders then." He sees even insects as a cycle of fathers and sons.

Kushner's writing (and perhaps his life) was an attempt to find, and control, wisdom. "The Torah, the Tao, the Tai, the tent pole / Runs through all the soul's enthusiasms," Kushner wrote.

I find his sidelong observations most wise: his grandmother's cravings "for radishes on snowy nights"; his description of his grandfather as "a Jewish Tarzan"; his announcement that "Marc Chagall's poems are better than his paintings."

Unlike most books, this book exists despite its author. Arthur Joseph Kushner was an itinerant handyman—sporting a belt hung with knives, vise-grips and screwdrivers—around New Paltz for many years. He was also a student of Tai Chi, Judaism, and Native American ritual. Arthur died on October 2, 2002 at the age of 56, leaving behind many friends and supporters. From an aged knapsack of curling file folders, the poet Mikhail Horowitz fashioned this book, sometimes correcting spelling or filling in an illegible word. Two CDs accompany the volume to give a vivid record of Arthur's performance and speech. (For more information see www.arthurjoseph.org.)