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Winner of the Texas Review Award

(The portrait of Ruffian on the cover
is in the private collection of John Bellucci)

On April 17, 1972, at ten minutes to ten in the late evening, three days late, the only time she would be, Ruffian was born at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky. She was born with a star on her forehead, a sign of what she would become: the fastest filly, maybe the greatest horse of all time. From her record breaking maiden race, she left behind the best fillies and mares in races she ran and won almost effortlessly as she won stakes and broke records. She was ahead at every point of call. Ruffian was strikingly beautiful, more like his Black Stallion the writer Walter Farley said than any colt he=d seen, the image of The Black Beauty. An undefeated winner of lightning fast speed, Ruffian was Champion Juvenile filly of 1974. She was never headed, flew to breathtaking, stunning victories with a stride like no other horse, almost ghostly. Invincible until just after her Triple Crown win for fillies it seemed Ruffian didn=t know how to lose. Then, in a tragic, misguided match race with the winner of the year=s Kentucky Derby, the colt Foolish Pleasure, she broke down, even then in the lead by nearly a length. Even on three legs, thrusting her broken foreleg into the ground over and over, she could not easily be pulled up.

No one who saw her can forget her. Ruffian was rare, perfect, spectacular, miraculous, bright and she is buried where no other horse has been buried, where she ran her first and last race at the infield at Belmont under the NYRA flag pole, her nose pointing, as it always did, toward the finish line.

Now, in her new poetry book, The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian, Lyn Lifshin gives us an intimate view of this remarkable horse.

"We can teach horses to break from a starting gate, load in a horse van, walk on a lead rope. We can teach them to be shod, ridden and bathed like dogs. We can handle them, corral them, coax them. But we never really tame them. Ruffian was untamed. She was the grizzly bear, the ballerina, the Ruffian. Yes — what made her great also killed her. Ruffian touched the world, for lots of reasons: she was a she, she was powerful and oh so fleeting. 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 liife and tragic death of this extraordinary horse, and Lyn Lifshin proves more than up tothe task in these poems. 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 and the freakiness of her speed, hence bring her back to life for an interminable moment so that we can once more wonder at the stellar quality of her being."
--Joe Le Rosa

"Thank you, thank you, thank you for the wonderful The Licorice Daughter. I have loved that horse since she first burst upon the scene in 1974. I have mourned more for her than most people that have died.

"Being a writer I tried to capture her remarkable grace and spirit in one of my columns. It was very, very hard to compose, and I never did feel fully satisfied with it. Now I know why-only poetry could ever do her justice. I think too, that not only was she better than Secretariat( who I also loved), she could have taken on any horse before and after her death and beaten them.

"Her death is something I will never get over and I thank you again for the words you wrote for that black girl that transcended all dreams while she lived. I am quite sure there will never be another like her."
-- Linda Hopkins

Published by:

Texas Review Press
PO Box 21426
SHSU
Division of English and Foreign Languages
Evans Building
Room 152
Huntsville TX 77341-2142
(936) 294-1992 (PH)
(936) 294-3070 (FX)

Available as of July 18, 2005 from the Texas Review Consortium at 800-826-8911

Available from Amazon.com

Read Lyn Lifshin's article on the 30th Anniversary of Ruffian's last race in Horse&Rider or download as a PDF file

Read the article published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, pub. Dec 27 2005

Hear Grace Cavalieri's interview with Lyn Lifshin after the publication of The Licorice Daughter (click here) and hear Lyn read from the book (click here) at Cafe Lena.

Read reviews of The Licorice Daughter

WHEN I THINK OF THE HORSES KEPT IN THE DARK OF MINES moving slowly thru candle light, no green, no sky or moon, and how, coming into the brightness above earth's grave, they went crazy, wild. It was too much to take in, the quivering leaves, scent of clover and yarrow. The blaze of sun frightened them like horses who run back to burning buildings, terrified. In their panic, they pick the known, even if it means death, like Ruffian who only knew how to fly to victory. Reined in, in agony, the horses battle what, like Ruffian, trying to outrun what scared her, blinds them	WITH BLUE GREEN GRASS HOLDING KENTUCKY NIGHT WATER at 9:50 April 17 she was there, suddenly, dark and slick as she would be on her last night. Ruffian, with a star on her forehead, pale buds outside the stall door. She was lying beside her mother on the straw. Her mare, Shenanigans, still sweaty from the birth tho it took less than half an hour. The filly, all long skinny legs, awkward, bent, too long it seemed for the little body, licorice but when wiped down, a dark chocolate with a few grey hairs and behind one left leg, a white band, a white bracelet to go with the star she'd be
ON THAT DAY it was as if she had wings and then the wings turned to wax, were melting. There was a hush, seconds after the wild cheers as Ruffian edged ahead. It was hot and the roses were dripping. The sun kept on, as it did with Icarus falling from the sky on melting wings. The birds didn't stop. When her jockey pulled her up that last night, everyone who knew must have covered their eyes
Pictures from the Ruffian Book-Signings: