"This full arc of life--bigger than imagination in a raging fire--is set on paper by a poet obsessed with beauty, hooves, and the passion of flight. 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 to 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