‘Pain was part of the hoops sonata’: What poetry tell us about sports

It’s National Poetry Month.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with sports?

I’d argue that art and sports aren’t mutually exclusive. Dante Pettis, a former 49ers receiver, was a creative writing major in college. Former Pro Bowl tight end Todd Christensen of the Raiders wrote poems, even reading them at a press conference for the Super Bowl in 1984.

Former NBA forward Etan Thomas wrote a book of poems titled “More Than An Athlete.” Former college basketball player Nikky Finney’s book of poems “Head Off & Split” won the National Book Award in 2011.

Natalie Diaz, a four-year point guard at Old Dominion who played in the NCAA Tournament all four years and later played overseas, has written several books of poems, wining the American Book Award in 2013 and the Pulitzer Prize in 2021.

So let’s celebrate with some poems about our collective passion, one that drives into a frenzy described by Ernest Thayer in his 1888 poem “Casey at the Bat.”

“‘Kill him! Kill the umpire!’ shouted someone on the stand; / And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.”

There’s a plethora of poems built into the sports consciousness of people around the world. Baseball has William Carlos Williams’ “The Crowd at the Ballgame” (the crowd is / cheering, the crowd is laughing / in detail / permanently, seriously / without thought) and John Updike’s “Tao in the Yankee Stadium Bleachers.” Ogden Nash wrote “Lineup for Yesterday,” which assigns a baseball player or theme to each letter of the alphabet. And Thayer wrote perhaps the best known baseball poem, the last line of which fans everywhere can chant from memory: “But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.”

Richard Hugo, probably my favorite poet, gives poignancy to the adult leagues of the world in “Missoula Softball Tournament,” writing “A long triple sails into right center. / Two men on. Shouts from dugout: go, Ron, go. / Life is better run from.”

If basketball is more your speed, try Diaz’s “Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good At Basketball,” (We grew up knowing that there is no difference between a basketball court / and church). Sherman Alexie has two hoops poems, “Why We Play Basketball” (We played ball / until dark, we played / until we could see) and “Victory” (He told me that every cry / Of pain was part of the hoops sonata).

And if you are like me, you had to read Updike’s “Ex-Basketball Player” in school, putting the fear of the Bruce Springsteen song “Glory Days” into me every time: “He never learned a trade, he just sells gas, / Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while, / As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube.” And Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Slam, Dunk & Hook” captures the beauty and escape from a harsher life (We outmaneuvered the footwork / Of bad angels).

This is no means an exhaustive list. English folks of a certain age will fondly recall the last lines of Henry Newbolt’s poem about cricket, “Vitai Lampada,” which goes “But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote — / ‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’” Another great poet, A.E. Houseman, wrote a poem most of us read at some point in school, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” which tackles the universal pain of watching life cut off too early: “So set, before its echoes fade, / The fleet foot on the sill of shade, / And hold to the low lintel up / The still-defended challenge-cup.”

You can find poems about football from the likes of Donald Hall, who wrote “Olives” about poets being jealous of football players’ luck with girls in school and how that changed with time, and the incomparable James Wright, whose “A Mad Fight Song for William S. Carpenter, 1966” took on the violence of the sport before anyone was talking about CTE (And terrified young men / Quick on their feet / Lob one another’s skulls across / Wings of strange birds that are burning / Themselves alive).

Poetry is partly the art of observation, and artists have been observing sports along with the rest of us for centuries. Engaging with poetry gives us the opportunity to gain a new perspective on the everyday and familiar, which, of course, includes athletics. During this monthlong celebration of an ancient and evolving art form, I can’t recommend highly enough getting out a book of poems or digging through the internet and finding a work about the sport you love most.

This column appeared in The Santa Rosa Press Democrat on April 6, 2022.