Summary
The speaker begins this poem in a simple way, saying she likes the female horses the best. They make everything look effortless, she thinks, whether they are running at their incredible top speed of 40 miles per hour or simply napping or eating grass. The speaker thinks the horses have a swagger after they win a race and says, "ears up!" to the horses, encouraging them to be proud and/or alert. Then the speaker admits, more straightforwardly, that the main reason she likes the lady horses best is simply that they're female. She likes to believe that she somehow has the same dangerous animal traits as the horse, and imagines a massive, heavy, powerful horse heart pumping inside the delicate exterior of her human skin. She asks the reader: don't we want to believe this as well? Don't we want to see her powerful heart? The speaker ends the poem thinking about her own heart, which she calls a "huge beating genius machine," and says her heart is absolutely certain that it will win.
Analysis
"How to Triumph Like a Girl" makes it clear in the title that this is a poem about female power. The "How" implies that we, as readers, have something to learn here—a direct lesson from Ada Limón to her audience similar to "Instructions on Not Giving Up." In her fourth book, Bright Dead Things, this poem is both the first poem and the poem reprinted on the front inside flap of the dust jacket on many editions—the book's champion poem in many ways. It is a bold statement of purpose that sets the tone for reading Limón's work. The poem tells us to expect nature imagery and wildness, feminist empowerment, and introspective sentimentality. The poem assumes a great responsibility by drawing this much attention to itself and approaches this challenge head-on like a racehorse.
The poem begins in first person, with a deceptively straightforward statement:
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
There are no formal trappings here: no rhyme or meter, and the syntax and line breaks are all smooth and conversational. There is just the speaker's blunt confession: she prefers the lady horses. The use of this phrase rather than the equestrian term "mares" or more clinical "female horses" lends the opening line casualness and familiarity. It almost sounds playful or childlike. The simplicity of the poem's start belies the wildness that is to come, setting readers up for surprises.
Lines 2-4 continue the casual tone with words like "easy" and "fun." Still, they encapsulate very quickly the full range of a racehorse's abilities: a top speed of 40 mph is a rare feat accomplished by highly trained steeds, whereas line four's images of napping and grazing are as simple and lazy as can be. The horses, which are an inspiration to the speaker, contain multitudes and are not troubled by this fact.
The next two lines continue the lighthearted, animated tone:
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
The word "swagger" personifies the horses a bit, developing the bravado and confidence that the speaker sees in them. The phrase "lady horse" is repeated once again, as if making sure the reader doesn't lose sight of the poem's gender specificity. And line six introduces the important concept of "winning," echoing the "triumph" promised in the title. Here, as in lines 2-3, the horses make it look fun and easy.
The command in line six stands out in the poem for a few reasons, explored more fully here, including the use of an exclamation point and the imperative address to the horses themselves. In addition to encouraging the horses to perk up, this could be read doubly as a call for attention from women and girls reading Limón's poem. "Ears up" may be signaling to the reader: Pay attention! This reinforces the instructional aspect of the poem's title. On one level, it is a fond show of affection to the horses; on another, it is a feminist call to attention.
Lines 7-8 revisit the poem's opening with new emphasis:
But mainly, let's be honest, I like
that they're ladies.
The speaker says "let's be honest" as if letting the reader in on a secret. That is, a secret that is fairly obvious by now in the poem: she likes the female horses explicitly because of their sex, because they represent to her the full extent of female potential.
Limón is still using very plain syntax and word choice: the poem feels almost naked, as if it is fully transparent and trying to hide nothing from the reader. This type of openness implies vulnerability, and helps the speaker's manifesto come across strongly. By the end of the poem, it will become clear that the speaker has nothing to fear from this vulnerability: she embodies the brash confidence of the lady horses, hidden by no obscure language or vagueness, yet indomitable and tremendous to behold.
Now the poem shifts to fully develop the parallel between speaker and horses, in lines 8-13:
As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
This long sentence marks a departure from the light, playful diction of the first seven lines. The speaker moves from simply describing the horses' behavior to describing their essence: what she sees as the "dangerous," "giant," "heavy" bestial nature of them. The word choice becomes unruly, and the extended syntax allows for more dramatic motion to build across these six lines. More than the outward facade of effortless grace, what truly binds the speaker in felt kinship to the horses is their untamed inner power. What matters is not her "delicate / skin" but the abilities within, a rejection of the superficiality with which women are often charged and a demand that we look deeper (into ourselves, and into this surprisingly nuanced poem).
Size is evoked multiple times in this sentence: "big," "giant," and "heavy." Women are socially conditioned to fear being called all of these adjectives, yet the speaker reclaims them as feminist inspiration and sees herself as larger than life. (See Limón's poem "Dead Stars," where the speaker imagines embracing her own greatness and growing to the size of constellations.) Women, Limón argues, should not be afraid to take up space like the lady horses do.
By claiming the "8-pound female horse heart," about ten times as heavy as a human heart, the speaker especially honors the organ popularly associated with emotion. As a full-time poet, Limón needs the time and space to explore her emotions deeply, a freedom that female writers have long been denied as the roles of domestic homemaker, wife, and mother demand that they compartmentalize their own feelings in deference to their husbands' or children's. This behemoth of a horse heart symbolizes not just the pump that keeps her body going, but the well of emotion that allows Limón to tap into her art.
The numerical specificity of "8-pound" echoes "40 miles per hour" from line 3, perhaps nudging the reader to imagine the physicality of this image, how massive this heart is. The numbers add a startling strangeness that forces the reader to pay attention much more than if Limón had written "like running at top speed" or "a big female horse heart."
What follows these lines is an even greater insistence for the reader's attention, a repeated question that morphs into an ambitious boast of confidence:
Don't you want to believe it?
Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.
In these lines the poem brings to fruition the techniques and tensions it has employed: direct address to the reader, the tension between playful feminine conversation and untamed animal self, and the arrogance balanced by vulnerability.
The question in line 14 asks how much we, as readers, are willing to buy into Limón's vision of female empowerment. Don't let this poem leave you unaffected, it seems to say: listen and learn. The direct interruption to address the reader is one of Limón's favorite tools. In "The Leash," she commands the reader: "Don't die." In "Dead Stars," "Look, we are not unspectacular things" marks a dramatic turning point in the poem.
Line 15 adds the curious undercurrent of sexual innuendo, analyzed in a close reading of these lines, perhaps building on the inviting tone of lines such as "let's be honest" and the poem's overall emphasis on showing the skin and what is underneath. This line is perhaps the most noteworthy use of enjambment in the poem: at the line break, the audience is briefly enabled to pause and imagine, tantalizingly, what we might "see" underneath the speaker's clothes. But of course, this poem does not operate in the realm of stereotypically docile female sensuality. Just as lines 10-12 looked past the "delicate / skin" to the wild animal heart inside, the simple tease of line 15 is quickly upended by the remainder of the sentence.
Instead of skin, the speaker shows us the image of her "huge beating genius machine," a surprising mash-up of adjectives that bridge intellectual to physical prowess, natural to mechanical energy. Again, size is prized. The triple "ee" assonance in "beating genius machine" draws out the syllables, evoking exertion and determination.
To fully emphasize the importance of the heart in this poem, Limón ends by personifying it. In these last two lines, it is not the speaker herself that is winning, but her heart: the core of her emotional, physical, human, and animal greatness. The poem consciously leans into the "lady horse swagger" in its word choice here, in the way the speaker corrects herself momentarily: "thinks, no, it knows." She is choosing boastfulness, as if pointedly defying the centuries of patriarchy that have made it so difficult for a woman to "triumph," so taboo for a woman to have "swagger" or to be "big," "dangerous," or "genius." The poem, which begins and primarily stays in plain, exposed language, shields itself in another way: with pure bravado. The speaker positions herself beyond reproach in the final lines, her victory already a fait accompli, a victory that has come via untamed femininity and a big heart.
