Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer's Story [Mass Market Paperback]

Maj Ragain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 23, 2001

Poetry. Prose. Cross Genre. "One way or another, Maj Ragain is going to touch you as you read his work. And you're going to like it. He may get you in the funny bone or you may find out for yourself that he sports the Tenderest Knockout Punch in the world. He also can wield a poleaxe ("The Last Horserace in Thessaloniki"); mainly he chooses to shuttle casually back and forth between what the Romans called gravitas and what Raymond Carver, in his last days, called gravy. It's a book about living life fully among others doing the same. The subject is the racetrack, but grace, in its many aspects, turns up in guise after guise. It's a book I bet you'll enjoy"-William Pitt Root. Maj Ragain combines poetry and journal entries with newspaper clippings, drawings, photographs and horse pedigrees in what Gary Gildner calls his "love affair with the horses and luck and life and sweet naming." The author has written three previous collections of poetry, including BURLEY ONE DARK SUCKER FIRED

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There is no book like TWIST THE AXE. No good book. Maj Ragain's love affair with the horses and luck an lfe and sweet naming, and betting on the outcome, is just tha, exactly, so buy a ticket, buy two, feel what happens." - Gary Gildner, author of THE BUNKER IN THE PARSLEY FIELD



"One way or another, Maj Ragain is going to touch you as you read his work. And you are going to like it....It's a book about living life fully among others doing the same. The subject is the racetrack, but grace, in its many aspects, turns up in guise after guise. It's a book I bet you'll enjoy." - William Pitt Root, author of TRACE ELEMENTS FROM A RECURRING KINGDOM

Book Description

Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer's Story. Poems and Journals by Maj Ragain

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 164 pages
• Publisher: Bottom Dog Press (December 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0933087705
• ISBN-13: 978-0933087705
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,325,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgivably brilliant., May 5, 2003

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer's Story (Mass Market Paperback)

Maj Ragain, Twist the Axe: A Horseplayers Story (Bottom Dog Press, 2001)

Twist the Axe is the best book Ive read this year, a conglomeration of Ragains writings on racehorses and the culture surrounding them culled from many years of work. This book collects previously published and unpublished work, poems, stories, journals, and the odd drawing or two, pairing them with newspaper clippings, result charts, family trees, and just about anything else one could think of. Ragain can lay claim to being one of the ten or twenty best poets working in America today; his distinctive poetic style, the storytelling diction Williams tried and failed to achieve time after time, meshes with the juxtaposed images of hopeless, cheap horses and the memories they raise. On one level, of course, its all about the horses; on another level, its about the rest of life.

Ragain never makes the reader dig too far; there are layers beneath, of course, for those who want to pursue them, but the average John Q. will certainly be able to understand the connections in Morning Line;

Jim Henson, father beard of muppets,
died of bacterial pneumonia, May 17, 1990.
The next day at Thistledown, fifth race,
a mare named Big Time Bird went off,
unacknowledged, at odds of 134 to 1.
Big Time Bird ran the race of her life,
drenched in and driven by grief,
the hot lasix of tears.
She finished second, a half length short,
beaten by a horse named Woman in Love.
You will never figure out this one.

This is one of those books that, if anyone outside the world of poetry knew of its existence, might have the power to draw thousands back into the fold. It is understandable, perfectly written, accessible not only to the poetry junkie but to the average reader. For most people, its a pleasurable new world; for the chosen few who have been lucky enough to have been reading Ragains books for longer, it will be another rest stop on the way to Paradise. They are all too few (this is Ragains fifth book, with the first published in 1979), and should be eagerly devoured, once found. *****

0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars ridiculous, May 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Twist the Axe: A Horseplayer's Story (Mass Market Paperback)

there are no poets today because there are no ears to hear them; what passes for it is written by pretenders such as these, men to whom the muse has never spoken, illiterate, poorly trained, intellectually and emotionally stunted. do yourself a favor: tattoo your body and buy this book. one will poison your body, the other your mind. i cannot imagine a more appropriate fate for you.