Lyn Lifshin

Before his career as a champion racehorse, and his death following a devastating injury, Barbaro was a colt like any other. In her traditional poetic style, Lifshin outlines the life of the champion horse before his fame, highlighting the beauty and grace of the young colt from his birth, through his youth, and finally to his time as a champion on the track. The artistic rendering of Barbaro’s life from his early years to his first races culminate in the celebration of his life after his death in this poetry collection.from “Those Nights in the Stall” did Barbaro dream horses galloping? In the dark, starless, did he feel the ground shaking? Imagine the sound of hooves on turf? Was there some thing in the wind? The scent of horses thundering past the barn, of flying manes, the beating of his own heart, louder than hooves?

This collection of poems captures the life and brilliance of one of racings biggest legends. In a lyrical style that brings the tale of Secretariat to life, Lifshin highlights the beauty and wonder of the foal’s early days from birth to the track. As always, Lifshin focuses on Secretariat’s life before the track, outlining the playfully perfect foal who found his way into the hearts of many. Full of emotion and beauty, this collection outlines the life and death of one of the tracks biggest racing legends.from “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 of northern lights out of darkness

Poetry. What we have mostly missed in all the reporting is the intimacy of a poet's voice who can bring the real right up inside us. Lyn Lifshin's volume of straightforward, exact poetry in KATRINA does this. There is a clear ungarnished force to her words that gives us the chance to bring our own sense of loss, grief and compassion into the lives of those who have been drawn into such an event.

Like the mythic Persephone, these poems move between worlds of wild light and onyx darkness. Abducted by Hades, Persephone was kept captive in the underworld until her mother, Demeter, consumed with rage and sorrow, refused to let anything live or bloom. Grudgingly, Hades released her but only after she tasted the pomegranate he offered, a fruit that kept her bound to him for three months of the year forever. These poems move between such ecstatic glimpses of love, sex, family and that underworld of pain, loss and dark coldness between parents and children, siblings, lovers and strangers. The blues and despair in her poems, immediate and powerful as the worlds of any woman who moves from darkness and cold into the green world of rebirth, light and flowers, highlights "the combination of eros, ebullience and triste, or sadness," a Lifshin trademark.

"Thoroughbred racing has never gotten over Ruffian. Lyn Lifshin came out of nowhere to become a Ruffian fan, a zealot for everything Ruffian stood for and all that she touched. Her poems will carry you away to a field of Kentucky foals, to the racetrack where each new horse could be the one, to the bone-numbing feeling of a runaway winner and to the despair of watching brilliance flame out. Ruffian would have liked Lifshin." --Sean Clancy, author of Saratoga Days "Eros and Equus perfectly combine in these sleek, sensual poems. From brilliant filly to tragic fatality, Lifshin keeps pace with this dark darling of the track, everybody's favorite-Ruffian." --Laura Chester "These poems do the memory and legacy of Ruffian The Beauty justice at last. Poetry is the only medium to evoke the life and tragic death of this extraordinary horse, and Lyn Lifshin proves more than up to the task. They mirror the evolution of Ruffian's athletic prowess and striking black beauty with deft attentiveness and poignant detail. They do not merely honor the memory of Ruffian, but invoke the dynamic ghost of her radiant presence . . ." --Joe La Rosa