by Lyn Lifshin
$12.95 List
Paperback: 5.5 x 8.5
ISBN: 978-1-937875-61-9
Poetry, Paperback, 160 pages
AS THE DAYS GET LONGER
the horse dreams
of flying in the air
like a gust of wind
on an abandoned
Christmas tree,
red exploding like
a spurt of light,
flaming wildly like
those boughs
out of darkness
Author’s Bio
Lyn Lifshin has published over 130 books and chapbooks including 3 from Black Sparrow Press: Cold Comfort, Before It’s Light and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me. Before Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle, Lifshin published her prize winning book about the short lived beautiful race horse Ruffian, The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness. Recent books include Ballroom, All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially The Lies, Light At the End: The Jesus Poems, Katrina, Mirrors, Persphone, Lost In The Fog, Knife Edge & Absinthe: The Tango Poems . NYQ books published A Girl Goes into The Woods. Also just out: For the Roses poems after Joni Mitchell and Hitchcock Hotel from Danse Macabre. Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle. And Tangled as the Alphabet— The Istanbul Poems from NightBallet Press Just released as well Malala, the dvd of Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. The Marilyn Poems was just released from Rubber Boots Press. An update to her Gale Research Autobiography is out: Lips, Blues, Blue Lace: On The Outside. Also just out is a dvd of the documentary film about her: Lyn Lifshin: Not Made Of Glass. Forthcoming books include Luminous Women:Eneduanna, Schererzade and Nefertiti: Femina Eterna and Moving Through Stained Glass: the Maple Poems.
Acknowledgement: Not only does Lifshin penetrate the physical genius of this super horse, she feels out Secretariat’s noble spirit from birth onward– -“the foal’s foreleg folded like a petal before it opens” –so that we almost sense what it is like to be inside the skin of this blazing colt destined- for greatness—his heightened perfection, his extreme sensitivity, sense pride and authority. “Trying to fault Secretariat’s confirmation is like dreaming of dry rain.
In Lifshin’s language, spare yet metaphorically profound, we enter into that animal grace that only a true poet can convey, as we race on from poem, joining Secretariat in triumph–not for a win but a coronation”
— Laura Chester
Lyn Lifshin’s portrait of the great horse Secretariat is tender, powerful, moving and wondrous as she follows his birth, colthood, shining career and forced retirement as gently as a mother singing a lullaby to her child and as proudly as if Secretariat were her own, with an added gifted flair for the mixture of discipline and wild abandon and joy that was his in running. Ensconced in her poetry, this miracle of speed and grace and intelligence will continue to live on in the hearts of every reader, even those who usually don’t read poetry, as her writing is both beautiful and accessible. Lifshin’s Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle is a book that will be remembered as much as the great Secretariat himself.
— Christina Zawadiwsky
Wins by 31 lengths! Championing the life and death of a champion, including the unexpected poetry of laminitis
I admit it. I bought this book because I wanted to read how a wonderful poet like Lyn Lifshin would capture Secretariat’s death from laminitis in poetry. I was not disappointed.
I did find a proofreading error in it; someone, somewhere changed the horse’s coffin bone in the foot to the cannon bone in the leg, but if you can just make a mental errata slip, Ms Lifshin’s vision of laminitis ripping his feet apart is tender and true, and the description of Secretariat’s day of death seems accurate with the biographical details in other books.
Much of Secretariat’s real story is open to interpretation or may never be known. Poetry is an ideal way to interpret the horse we will never forget, the one we thought we knew, and the one who meant so much–albeit something different–to each of his fans. (And still does.)
Secretariat’s life told in poems? A winner by 31 lengths, just like its inspiring subject.
— Fran Jurga
Horse Lovers & Poetry Lovers Unite!
Ah joy! Just finished “Secretariat”. I couldn’t put it down. What a beautifully crafted book, how beautifully these poems are put together into a whole. I loved every part of the book. I didn’t know about this remarkable horse’s life before reading the book. I felt drawn into the perceptions of his life, from his point of view and the viewpoints of his grooms, trainers, jockeys, fans. So uplifting and yet so sad at the end, but still this remarkable horse lives on in our dreams and hopes. The poems are delicious. I felt Lifshin had written many more on this subject, but cut it down to the bare bones, which is quite effective.
— Alicia Aaronowitz