fastbreak

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"Fast Break"--Sometimes It's Not Just
What You'd Expect--(Feb. 2, 2002)

A few days ago, we came across a remarkable anthology featuring stories and poetry (that's right, poetry) about basketball, entitled "Full Court: A Literary Anthology of Basketball" editied by Dennis Trudell and published by Breakaway Books, which is available at Amazon.com (just click on the title above) and elsewhere. It's must reading for hoops fans who love the language of basketball. Among the many poems contain in the book is one that we especially enjoyed, written by Edward Hirsch (whose bio is also below in case you want to see it). The poem was written as an elegy to one of his closest friends, with whom he enjoyed playing basketball in college. One day the friend had a stomache, and went to see the doctor. It turned out that he had stomach cancer and died a short while later.

Fast Break

by Edward Hirsch

(In memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984)

A hook shot kisses the rim and
hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop

and for once our gangly starting center
boxes out his man and times his jump

perfectly, gathering the orange leather
from the air like a cherished possession

and spinning around to throw a strike
to the outlet who is already shoveling

an underhand pass toward the other guard
scissoring past a flat-footed defender

who looks stunned and nailed to the floor
in the wrong direction, turning to catch sight

of a high, gliding dribble and a man
letting the play develop in front of him

in slow motion, almost exactly
like a coach's drawing on the backboard,

both forwards racing down the court
the way that forwards should, fanning out

and filling the lanes in tandem, moving
together as brothers passing the ball

between them without a dribble, without
a single bounce hitting the hardwood

until the guard finally lunges out
and commits to the wrong man

while the power-forward explodes past them
in a fury, taking the ball into the air

by himself now and laying it gently
against the glass for a layup,

but losing his balance in the process
inexplicably falling, hitting the floor

with a wild, headlong motion
for the game he loved like a country

and swiveling back to see an orange blur
floating perfecting through the net.

From Wild Gratitude (1985), by Edward Hirsch.

Be sure to read this poem more than once. Really, read it slowly, and like the game of basketball, "let the game come to you" and you'll begin to appreciate Hirsch's choice of language, and his sense of the rythym of the game and the sensibility of the poem.

Hey, it's something different, but we thought you'd all appreciate it.

Edward Hirsch was born in Chicago in 1950 and educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of five books of poems: On Love (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); Earthly Measures (1994); The Night Parade (1989); Wild Gratitude (1986), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; and For the Sleepwalkers (1981), which received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. He teaches at the University of Houston.