Baseball Poetry Story aired: Thursday, June 05, 2003
In a poem that's about 20-25 lines, write about a baseball player, about a baseball team, about why you love or hate baseball...you can even write about the Yankees.
The deadline is next Thursday, June 12th.
Please send your poems to letters@here-now.org. Include the word "baseball" in the subject line, and please DO NOT send attachments with your email. Email the poem in the text of the message.
Here are some examples from our roving poets:
Baseball Poets Molly Saccardo
Coach has Longfellow batting clean-up. Because of his name, he gets pegged as a power hitter. Wadsworth is alright, but Walt Whitman belongs in that spot. He sends the ball right out of the park and into America large. Now, Poe, when he gets on, he runs those bases with the tintintibulation of a tiger, tiger, tiger paws clawing straight from hell. He plays a hot shortstop, too. When he grabs a line drive and fires off for the double play to Sandburg at first, well, that?s poetry.
One afternoon they pulled the six-three off to save the game for Frost. He was tiring and just couldn?t get that high heat over. That play gave Robbie the fire to come back in the ninth to take them down with his curve. The umpire called every batter-out-out-y?er out!-- all on the pitch not taken.
Balk Jim Behrle
so much depends upon hitting the cut-off man before shadows creep and hold the diamond.
a shot with just enough pop to splash the pool in the Bob-- oasis meet Arizona desert valley.
in Rustys, Dustys and Chippers we trust, their eyeblack a-sparkle in the wonderful drag of mid-afternoon.
hooray for the howling boos lifting from the cheap seats like the highest tide to sweep away a thunderstruck pitcher.
hooray even for the goats, you who miss signs, who bobble, who serve up lame fastballs and hanging curves that quack.
fathers and sons watching together, or sons thinking of fathers, who once passed to them a heavy, dusty bat.
would I could write a line as clean as a 4th inning sinker, or joyous and sloppy as the wave, crassly filling a lull.
Here's an example from William Carlos Williams:
At the Ball Game William Carlos Williams
The crowd at the ball game is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness which delights them --
all the exciting detail of the chase
and the escape, the error the flash of genius --
all to no end save beauty the eternal --
So in detail they, the crowd, are beautiful
for this to be warned against
saluted and defied -- It is alive, venomous
it smiles grimly its words cut --
The flashy female with her mother, gets it --
The Jew gets it straight -- it is deadly, terrifying --
