The Best American Poetry

Sports Desk: The Bike I Came in On (Italian Edition) [Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

Abandon, Attack, Big Ringing It, Bonk, Broom Wagon, Domestique, Grupetto, Tubular, Velo, Wheel Sucker, Lead Out, Paceline, Popped. Blown, Had it, Knackered, Stuffed, Squirrel, Velo, Wheel Sucker!

Bike racing terminology! I don’t understand a word of it!
Ciao Tutti! Hello from Italy. Sports Desk is back for a second season and we are broadcasting live from Civitella di Ranieri in Italy where yours truly is working on poems, essays, gaining weight and writing about all manner of Italian sports. Look at our office! 

I haven’t been to Italy since I was sixteen years old and I haven’t really ridden a bike since I was twelve and had an unfortunate encounter with a car and a ditch. Does that stop me from loving bike racing? It does not. Do I understand the minutiae of bike racing? I do not.

But these 6 weeks are about learning. Everything. Learning how to live with 15 remarkable artists in a castle (easy). Learning how to step away from the administrative work of the day to day and believe one is worthy of the gift of a castle and a turret with sunlight and blood oranges and a snoring owl in the eaves and time to make your art (harder). Learning how to ask for directions, cheese, a kilo of gelato, the most perfect pork sandwich, guidance, more wine, less wine, envelopes, you name it. I’m a kid again. I’m a kid in a castle. Just like Maurizio’s son who’s playing outside as I type this.

If I ever wanted a chance to learn about bike racing I couldn’t ask for a better opportunity than right now in Italy. I know lots of you are getting hungry for the World Cup (we’ll get there) but from May 8-30th Italy has its eyes on an army of cyclists who started in the Netherlands and are making their way to Verona. Giro D’Italia! The name alone feels good in your body. Most of us who don’t know squat about racing just know about the Tour de France. The Giro has been around since 1909 and, along with the Tour and the Vuelta a España, is part of the Triple Crown of cycling. As opposed to the Tour de France’s famous yellow leader’s jersey the Giro goes pink in honor of La Gazzetta dello Sports whose pages are pink. It’s a gorgeous thing, that jersey. When the helicopters fly overhead to film the Giro you just see all that green of the hillsides and all those bodies and then just this lone pink jersey making its way through the pack. 

 But what does it mean? Like a sonnet or a villanelle or the famous saganaki recipe your grandmother gave you it’s easy for the thing to just seem like a list of rules and phrases that don’t add up to much. It can feel like some other language you can sort of understand but don’t have access to.

Well. Yesterday the Giro D’Italia rode past the home of Robert Browning as they made their way towards Monte Grappa. This is one of the most grueling stages of the race, a slow ascent to the summit, which sits 5823 feet above sea level. When you get to the summit you come to a giant monument of white stone, part of which is a mausoleum that holds the bones of 23,000 Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops who fought and died there in 1917. The bones of the Italian troops are buried on the south side so they face Italy. Among the Austro-Hungarian dead there is a soldier named Peter Pan.

There was no Giro D’Italia that year. The race was stopped during both WWI and WWII. During WWII Fausto Coppi, a 5 time Giro winner and arguably the greatest cyclist in the history of the race, was taken prisoner and held in a POW camp in North Africa. Len Levesley, a British cyclist, recounted Coppi giving him a haircut in the camp:

I should think it took me all of a full second to realise who it was. He looked fine, he looked slim, and having been in the desert, he looked tanned. I'd only seen him in cycling magazines but I knew instantly who he was. So he cut away at my hair and I tried to have a conversation with him, but he didn't speak English and I don't speak Italian. But we managed one or two words and I got over to him that I did some club racing. And I gave him a bar of chocolate that I had with me and he was grateful for that and that was the end of it.* 

I remember when I was in high school my French teacher telling us that we had no idea what it was like to live in a country where everywhere you looked there was still the physical reminder of war. I could argue that the wounds of the Civil War are still very much open but I know what he meant and he was right. During yesterday’s stage the cyclists passed shell craters and trenches and places where the bones of soldiers are still being unearthed. I can’t imagine it. It’s another language. It’s hard for me to even find the words.

I’ve been to Italy once before. In the summer of my sixteenth year. My friend Amy invited me to come with her to Italy and I was so excited and also pretty nervous. I’d never traveled without my grandparents before and though I was at a school full of worldly kids and tried to seem worldly myself, the fact was I was from a small town and didn’t really know much about anything outside of books and the world I’d made up in my head. And the minute we got to Italy I got robbed. Right there in the tunnel between the airport and the train station. My passport, my money, my Travelers checks. I was too in shock to even fall apart. But I knew it was bad and I just wanted to go home.

And then the most amazing things happened. The policeman sat me down and sang, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” We decided to take the train to Siena where we were supposed to end up and on that train we met Ali Ali who just happened to work at a restaurant on the Campo in Siena and told us to come to dinner. After dinner we were sitting on the steps of some building and a man came up and said, “Are you considering suicide?” Which I wasn’t but only because I probably figured I’d screw that up too. The man’s name was Adriano. He was a truffle farmer and ended up being our guide and angel through the rest of that time. Ali Ali had other friends who’d come to Italy from Palestine and each night they’d walk me home and make sure I got in the gate safely. I saw art like I’d never seen in my life. I ate food and laughed and felt all kinds of love. I went to Florence and got a new passport and watched Amy and learned how to be a little bit worldly. I relied on the kindness of strangers and gained confidence in myself. I learned a little Italian because the people were so kind and were always willing to help.

There’s this term in cycling. Peloton. It means, “platoon.” It’s the heart of competitive cycling because it’s the pack that dictates the speed of the race. When you see it from above it’s kind of like looking at birds flying south. Riders in the peloton change position to conserve energy. Teammates will help their leader out by trying to dictate the speed of the peloton, often sacrificing themselves so their he can get in better position. Teams will often block the rest of the peloton at the end of a race so their sprinter can get to the finish line first. One of the most beautiful things I ever read was how Lance Armstrong’s team rode close enough to him that he wouldn’t get wet when the rain started falling. When I went through a tough patch a few years back I kept a picture of him in my wallet. I’d wake up on those terrible mornings and say to myself, “Who’s your peloton today?” And I’d whisper my friends’ names and imagine them covering me.  These next weeks we’ll learn about Italian sports together. And we’ll have help from some special guests who know a lot more than I do and have already been helping me more than I can say. Ciao from the left turret. I'm looking forward

* Fellowship of Cycling Old Timers. Vol 154.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi writes the Sports Desk column for The Best American Poetry blog. Her second book of poems is Apocalyptic Swing. She owes the good fortune of getting to write from an Italian castle to the remarkable Civitella di Ranieri Foundation (http://www.civitella.org/)

Hoop Dreams: Talk to Her Edition [Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

I’ve said it before but I feel like the most appropriate author photo for a writer with a significant other is a picture of said writer doing something like sitting with their head in their hands or staring at the ceiling or lying in the fetal position under the dining room table weeping and behind them their partner staring at them with a look that says, “Really? Isn’t this what we did yesterday?”

Take my partner, Penelope Cruz.* Today in Los Angeles, in between interviews and a photo shoot and doing her doctoral work, she sat down next to me on the couch and said, “If you do not figure out what to write for Sports Desk I don’t want to think what’s going to happen to you.” I might have put a sort of curse on myself earlier in the day and said something like, “If I don’t finish this post today then…” It’s not worth getting into the exact nature of the curse. It does involve my abilities to sit down and also process Thai food. 

 

“Just say it,” she said. In addition to being a very fine actress, Penelope knows that I have a secret.  For the last two weeks she has been urging me to write about it and I’ve done things like sit on the couch and stare at the ceiling and say, “You don’t even like sports. You can’t understand.” I don’t want to brag but some people have told me my theatrical abilities are “really something.” The thing is, she’s right. All these weeks I’ve been holding back. I’ve been getting requests for the next Sports Desk column and everyone seems to want the same thing. Penelope gets off of skype with Pedro and says, “For goodness sakes just tell them.” And then she kisses me. A lot.

Fine.

I do not give a damn about March Madness.

Go ahead. Tell me how great it is. That it’s the only sport you like. That we get to see basketball the way an old white guy from Canada intended it. It’s about the love of the game. It’s about the little guy. It’s about the school you teach for and so who cares that you don’t like sports because OH MY GOD, BAYLOR!!!!!

I told Penelope this was going to be the post where I lost all my readers. It’s not that I don’t like college basketball. I actually love it. I particularly love women’s basketball. I’m from Connecticut.  I grew up during the era of Rebecca Lobo and the first truly great UConn women’s team. Every kid in Connecticut wore a UConn jersey at one point or another. I love the fact that women’s games sell out even more than the men’s and I love the fact that last year, coming home from Columbia, MO I sat on the shuttle to St. Louis with a family member of UConn’s star player, Maya Moore and we talked all about how amazing that program is and all the opportunities she has and what a thing it is to watch a young woman do what she does best in the world, and better than most. I love how excited the crowds get and that it’s not like a Lakers game or Knicks game where very few hard working people can afford a seat and kids from poor backgrounds who love the sport sure can’t see a game live.  I love the spirit of it. I like the idea of it. I love all those people driving across the country and screaming in bars and kids running down the court and cutting the net down when they win. I love that Vermont gets to play in a televised game and get their hats handed to them by Syracuse but who cares because oh my gosh they got there. March Madness!!!!

It’s getting a little warm in here. Maybe I do love March Madness.

Nope. Look, here’s what I don’t love.

I don’t love watching women athletes reach the height of their career at the age of 20. I know, WNBA, Olympics, Europe. Whatever. It’s not the same. The women who play basketball on teams like UConn and Tennessee are having their professional careers right now. And they aren’t getting compensated for it. The WNBA is not a success. The women who play in the Sweet 16 during March Madness will have a bigger and more consistent television audience than they ever will if they play professionally.

The team salary cap within the WNBA for the year 2013 (yes, three years from now) is $913,000.  Let’s just say that figure again. $913,000.

Here are a few other figures from the Altius Directory:

 WNBA Bonuses

    * WNBA Champion - $10,500 per player

    * Championship Runner-up - $5,250 per player

    * Eliminated in semifinals - $2,625 per player

    * Eliminated in quarterfinals - $1,050 per player

    * Most Valuable Player Award - $15,000

    * All-WNBA First Team Award - $10,000 per player

    * All-WNBA Second Team Award - $5,000 per player

    * Defensive Player Award - $5,000

    * Sportsmanship Award - $5,000

    * Rookie of the Year Award - $5,000

    * Most Improved Player Award - $5,000

 WNBA Salary Fast Facts:

    * Rookie minimum salary: $34,500

    * Average rookie salary: $36,500, plus daily allowance

    * Veteran (over 3 years with the WNBA) minimum: $50,000,

    * Maximum salary: $95,000

· Team salary cap: $750,000, which teams may exceed by 4%

There are 34 games in a season. 43 if you make it all the way.  It’s hard on your body and even if you play pro your career is short. You’re going to have surgeries and lots of medical bills and, oh yes, many college stars are still going to have student loans to pay off. Imagine if you were better at what you did than most people in the world and that many of the guys you went to school with were making either insane money professionally or pretty good money in Europe. It’s a hard pill to swallow and when I see all those women in one place, playing so beautifully, and I know that many of them came from situations as economically desperate as their male counterparts, it takes some of the joy out of it for me. And when I read how much money schools make on the backs of these women...  I still cheer for them and I am so happy they get their moment on television but I also think it’s sad.

And it’s not just the women.  It’s great watching the guys play but I don’t feel the argument about it being pure basketball. I think the joy is pure and I think it wouldn’t be hard to make the men’s side of things feel equal for everyone in terms of what the college’s and the NCAA get out of it and what the players get. Because it’s true that part of the joy (and there is tremendous joy) of watching March Madness is seeing kids who are never going to be pro play on a national stage and just kill it. The Sports Illustrated I got last week shows Vermont’s, Maurice Joseph looking thunderstruck as Syracuse’s Scoop Jardine goes in for the layup.  At the same time, a lot of money gets made off of March Madness. CBS made over $600 million in television advertising last year.  The deal the NCAA signed with CBS is worth $6 billion dollars over 11 years.  The NCAA can use the image of any player for any purpose and they make a lot of money doing it. And the players don’t see a penny except for tuition scholarships. It may be “pure” to say that an education is all a college player should hope for but this is big business for a lot of people. And many college players are not going to go pro and many have been allowed to slide by academically, leaving them unprepared for post-collegiate, post-basketball life. There’s a case weaving its way through the courts that would require that college athletes be compensated for the use their image and their name.  Right now, you can buy a copy of March Madness: The Greatest Moments Of The NCAA Tournament (DVD) for $19.95. The narrator is a CBS commentator. No students will see royalties from that.

 “See,” I just told Penelope. “I’m a total downer.” She says she’s just glad I got the post finished. “You just want to write about baseball.” True. I’ve been listening to spring training on the radio and picking out which Orioles shirt to buy this year. I do want to talk about baseball. But sometimes you just have to get the tough stuff off your chest before you can say anything else.

* My partner’s name is actually Angeline. She won’t let me use her last name. She’s the one standing there in the photo of me lying beneath my desk with my head in the trash basket.

Sports Desk: Throw Like A Girl. Variations on a Theme for Johnny Weir. [Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

I.

I have a VHS somewhere of Martina Navratilova winning her ninth Wimbledon. I taped every match of hers that summer and would watch them over and over. I’m not sure I knew at that point what it was I was looking for. It’s true she was amazing. Nobody played like her, nobody was as strong. The baseline is boring as a suburb and Martina left it behind and came to the net. If you watch videos of her on YouTube you can feel when she’s about to come forward. The crowd gets excited and she’s so fast and you don’t need to know anything about tennis to know it’s over for her opponent. She’s super muscular. She doesn’t look “American” in the way that the other U.S. players of that era do. Which makes sense because she defected from Czechoslovakia. She’s big and strong and tough. She yells and she cries and the crowds took a long time to like her.  By the time she won the ninth Wimbledon Chris Evert was out of the sport. It’s undeniable though that a good deal of the American public’s perception of Navratilova was shaped by the rivalry between the two and Evert’s not so subtle comments about Navratilova’s “swagger.”

Martina Navratilova was involved with Rita Mae Brown for many years. I read about it in her autobiography, ­ ­Martina. It was a trade paperback I’d saved up to buy. That was the year all the boys wore Calvin Klein Obsession for Men. I picked up one of those sample sheets at G. Fox and placed in the book as a bookmark. The summer of the ninth Wimbledon she wasn’t with Brown anymore. She was with Judy Nelson, the former wife of a Fort Worth doctor. They were raising Nelson’s two teenage sons. Judy didn’t look like any other lesbians I’d seen. She was super made up, had big hair, wore a lot of jewels and expensive sunglasses.  And there she was, sitting in the family box for each match, often next to Billie Jean King, the first openly gay professional athlete.  I was transfixed. The commentators called her Navratilova’s “friend.” I knew what that word meant. I wanted one of those.

(When I was in second grade I rode the bus to and from school. Some afternoons our bus driver’s teenage daughter, Candy, would ride with her mother. She was pretty and nice. I was one of the last stops (I think) and so I was sort of alone on the bus with them. Sometimes her boyfriend, Keith, would ride along. She’d sit on his lap or rest her head on his chest. He played football and his hair was always slicked back. He’d link his arms around her waist. They’d kiss when her mother wasn’t looking. I’d walk past them getting off the bus and they’d always say goodbye really nicely. I’d walk home wondering what it would be like to have a girl feel that safe with me, to have her rest her head on my chest.)

Nobody had ever won nine Wimbledons. It was unthinkable. Grass is so hard to play on. It depends on the length and the wear and the weather.  You get funny bounces like you get on clay but it isn’t as slow so you have to respond even faster. Navratilova won on every surface but to really understand her brilliance you had to watch her play on grass courts. She just drove people crazy. She could read the court and make the ball speed up or die at the net and drop so her opponent looked flat-footed. For two weeks a person could sit and watch the best grass court player in the history of the sport decimate her opponents. And you could watch her “friend” taking it all in, chatting with her boys, cheering, looking nervous. You could see Navratilova look up at her. You knew she was looking up at her.

Then she won. She beat her friend Zina Garrison in the finals and fell to her knees. She got up and went into the stands and climbed past people and went right up to Judy Nelson who was crying and hugged her and hugged her. They were both crying and so were Nelson’s sons. People talk about Ellen and she’s real important but for many of us that was the moment the closet door opened on T.V. And it wasn’t make-believe. It was two women who made a life together. It was (to be impolitic) a muscular, handsome woman who was the best in the world at what she did, being loved by the girl who’d married the quarterback. It was that dream for all of us to see. It wasn’t just a gay dream. It was about possibility and anything being yours if wanted it badly enough. I played the moment over and over.  I thought about it and didn’t feel ashamed. They aren’t together anymore but, really, it wasn’t so much about them as the possibility of that kind of victory.

II.

It’s eight days past the Olympics and I’ve been thinking about Johnny Weir.  He skated the skate of his life. In the midst of all the press it is worth starting there. Johnny Weir is nearing the end of his athletic career.  He will probably skate on the same touring circuit as other former Olympians. He’ll have a television show and become even more of a public figure. But let’s start by saying nobody who is serious about skating thought he would win a gold medal.  I say this not to diminish him but to say that above and beyond identity, Johnny Weir proved a lot of skating fans wrong. You can hear how excited the American commentators are. And you can tell the crowd knows something very special is happening. He didn’t skate well enough to win gold but his scores were shockingly low and one has to wonder.  He posted an elegant, athletic and technically beautiful skate.  And it doesn’t even come close to his grace and strength in the face of the homophobic banter of the commentators from Quebec. To my mind the most powerful statement he made was not about his sexual identity (though he was beautifully articulate in that). The most remarkable thing Johnny Weir did was say that he would not ask for a retraction because he believes in the First Amendment rights of all individuals.  It was the most patriotic moment of the games and it happened in a press room.

Sports Desk: Letter to Tiger [Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

Dear Tiger,

 Good morning from Los Angeles. All week long I’ve been watching the Olympics and thinking what to write about for my Sports Desk column. Truth be told I’m a little late. I’m falling into all of the old clichés about poet sports columnists: by the time we’re done revising it’s next season. But it’s hard. There’s so much amazing stuff to write about. 

  Like Torah Bright. First of all, I had never watched women’s snowboard half-pipe before. Let me tell you, if I had one ounce of physical ability that would totally be my event. The speed, the tricks, the fact that you seem to get to wear your iPod when you compete. Man. Totally. And I just love the fact that the commentators are young enough that they have no problem saying someone like Torah is better than a vast majority of the men. You don’t really hear that talk among the older sportscasters. But it’s true. Anybody who watches sports can tell. She’s just so good. You know, she had a ton of concussions in the past year and it didn’t always seem like she would be able to compete. But there she was, just ripping it up. And the crowd was going crazy for her. That’s something else I love about snow boarding at the Olympics. Everyone just seems to be having so much fun. Even when they lose, the boarders tend to be smiling. I mean, you can tell it kills them and nobody could ever think that they don’t care.  At the same time it seems to me like they know they’re also part of a culture born from skate boarding and surfing and the punk scene in Southern California. So there’s this sense of being glad to be on such a big stage and also knowing it isn’t necessarily where they’re from. I love that. How the Olympics has room for all kinds of different values and world views.  Like Torah. She’s a Mormon. She doesn’t make a big deal of it but she doesn’t hide it either. She also says there’s a ghost in her house. She can also fly or at least that’s how it looks.

The other person I love is Bode Miller. I know. I know. Why do I have to love all the famous American athletes? Well, I did get really excited by Simon Amman, the Swiss ski jumper who just won his fourth Olympic gold (a record in the sport).  I love the way it looks when those guys come off the jump and just shoot through the air. Here he is in 2002:

Also, he looks like a superhero. Which is very cool. I tried to rock a spandex suit like that once and I was told in no uncertain terms never to do that again. Which is why I became a poet. Because I can wear my spandex outfit and helmet at home and nobody will ever know.

Anyway. Bode. I just love him. His family actually runs the tennis camp that my cousins all went to.  My great-aunt Gertrude always talks about him with a lot of love. Like the media, she calls him a “bad boy.” The difference is the pride in her voice.   Gertrude is in her 80’s and has been working in the prison system, teaching men to read and get their GED, since she moved to New Hampshire 40+ years ago.  When she and I drove to see the assisted living facility she was moving into we passed a prison and she said, “Only ten minutes from the house, dear.” Pretty much my hero. So Bode has been in my ear for most of his career. He’s amazing. You probably know him. The press is really hard on him because during the 2006 Olympics he made a number of statements about loving to party and being wasted and generally being young and not particularly disciplined in his personal life. He talked about skiing and driving while drunk.  He looked foolish. And then he lost each race.  Which taught him something, it seems. Now he’s back and he’s already won two medals. He has two more events.  He’s older and more in control of himself. It’s a good lesson. How you can be so talented and still make a mess of things and then you can come back and rock it. But the press won’t let it go. How he disappointed all of us.

Yeah. All week I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about in my column. I don’t really know if there’s a ton of room for a poet to be writing about sports but I just get so much out of it. When I taught at Stanford (it was about 4 years after you left to turn pro) I had a number of students who were on track to become Olympians or professional athletes. I remember I was Ta’ing a Renaissance Lit class and this student Greg came in from football practice.  We were getting ready to talk about Spencer and he stood there in the doorway. I asked what was up and he said “one sec” and put his shoulder against the doorframe and pushed as hard and fast as he could. He got super pale, breathed deep and said, “Okay, let’s talk about The Faerie Queene.” Last time I checked, he played for the 49ers. He got an A in my class and wrote a tremendous final essay. I also had a student named Isaac who was in my workshop. He’d taken a year off to go on mission like most young Mormon men do and now he was back. He needed to decide if he was going to try and qualify for the Olympic Cross Country team or go to law school. In the end he decided on law school. Those athletes in my classes taught me a ton about focus and hope and being super rigorous. I try and do that in my poems. Be the best I can be, then push farther (risk failure) and have a good time while doing it.

I’ve been thinking about you. You were on the front page of the New York Times yesterday. Well, the picture was actually a bar full of people watching you apologize on television. Hm. I don’t even like golf. But I kept thinking about 2008 when you played the US Open with a broken leg. And how the crowd just went crazy every time you came through. You were in so much pain and you kept going. It’s like ski jumping: I don’t know much about the sport but I know when I’m seeing something so extraordinary there’s a lesson in it for me and my artistic life. Most of the golfers on the tour want you to come back because, as one of them said, when you are good at something you want to play against the best. I think that’s true. I wonder what’s going to happen with you.

From Los Angeles.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of Apocalyptic Swing (Persea Books. 2009). She lives in Los Angeles.

Sports Desk: Beneath The Underdog [by Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

Sports Desk: Super Bowl Edition

Hard to imagine a more joy filled Super Bowl than the one we got to witness Sunday night.  Even with the Focus on Family ad being shown and The Who taking up space that could have been filled by lots of bands who would have better represented the spirit of Miami and the two teams playing in the game, the fact remains that we saw pretty much everything that is great about sports and the people who play them.  We saw Colts guard Kyle DeVan who went from being a substitute teacher to playing in the biggest game of the season. Jeff Saturday, the Colts Center, was an electrician during a year away from the NFL. Drew Brees, the QB for The Saints, has been called too little to play in the NFL. All in all it was a day of second chances and good lessons about hard work and perseverance.

 Two days later it still feels awfully good to think about that game. And yet, like the jambalaya I made on Sunday, time makes everything deeper and a bit more complicated.  Today the words “New Orleans” are still on the lips and the sports pages of America.  But what about next week? What about our responsibility to that city and the people who live in it? One reason Drew Brees is a hero in New Orleans is that he went there after the storm and made a commitment to lead that team to victory as a means of lifting the city up and helping it get back on its feet. I wonder what that means after the game.  I’ve been doing a good deal of research on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for another project of mine. I decided I’d take the lead of that Google ad everyone was talking about after the Super Bowl:

 I typed in the words “MLK New Orleans.” The results weren’t nearly as romantic but they were perhaps a better indicator of where that city stands than any of the pre-game coverage. When you type those words (let your soundtrack be the VIP Ladies All Stars second line band) the first link you’ll see is “MLK Charter School.” First you’ll see the address and then you’ll see a link to their homepage:

http://drkingcharterschool.org/

 The photos of smiling students and an admiring President only tell part of the story. One of the ways New Orleans has begun to “come back” is to hand its schools over to the corporate charter system.  Dr. King Charter School is a part of a network sponsored by Capital One, the same company that makes a good deal of its money providing credit cards to people with bad credit.  The day after the Super Bowl Capital One, citing the current economic climate, announced interest rates on most cards’ outstanding balances will jump from 8.01 percent to 15.31.

 People have all kinds of different opinions on the corporate charter system. President Obama is a big fan and it is true that in parts of New Orleans there seem to have been improvements to the abysmal state of education. If one goes by test scores (a tricky business) then things are marginally looking up. Some schools are seeing better attendance trends. The challenge with those schools is the same challenge a team faces. Will folks stick around after the victory? Certainly the people of New Orleans will. But there’s a real question if the companies who run these schools are really in it for the long haul. What happens if Capital One comes to the same crossroads as so many of our other financial institutions? What programs will be cut first? More importantly, will we still be watching?  The Saints are a story we love because everyone roots for the underdog. What about the fact that charter schools in New Orleans are reportedly turning away special needs children? A common term that is used is “dumping.” Not surprisingly this is the same term used to describe hospitals’ practice of putting indigent people back on the street instead of providing them proper care. Big hospitals, big schools, big prisons, big business. As we cheer the return of the Saints and The Big Easy it is important to think about the oversight that allowed so many people’s lives to end up underwater.   Today the homeless population in New Orleans numbers 12,000 and a third of city residences remain empty for one reason or another.  There is so much to celebrate but we’re really just at the start of the game.

 As I write this I’m listening to the rainfall in Los Angeles. I’m also swaying back and forth to a recording my friend, the writer Nelson Eubanks, made me of the The V.I.P. Lady All Stars second line band from a few weeks before Katrina. He was living in New Orleans and recording all the second line bands. Those weeks before the storm he wrote to me saying things were awfully tense between the bands and the police. On the recordings he’d send me you can hear the cops coming through and people arguing or mostly just saying, “Let em pass. Let em through.” At one point you hear an old man’s voice. He starts saying, “A storm is coming. A storm is coming.” That’s not meant to be romantic or theatrical. It’s meant to say there was trouble in that city and everybody but the majority of America knew that to be so. We almost lost the second lines in the flood. And the Superdome was hailed in some Super Bowl coverage as the “home” for people displaced by the storm.

 It wasn't a home. It was a horror. It was also the logical result of what comes from the neglect and abuse of the poorest and least protected among us.  I keep playing back Tracy Porter’s winning touchdown.

 

It just feels so good.  To know you can come out from under and run all the way home. As usual, and fittingly in tribute to the complicated miracle that is New Orleans, let’s end with a song. Here are the V.I.P. Ladies, back in action. It’s gonna make you dance and grin and hope wherever you are:

Sports Desk, Double Wide Editon: How I Learned to Drop the Ball and Love the Bull [by Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

 This past week I took a hell of a spill. It was a nice day and I thought I’d go for my usual walk as way of moving into the writing day. I’ve started playing music on my Blackberry and that is a bad idea, as evidenced by the fact that one moment I was walking across Ogden Street deciding between Coldplay and Sigur Ros and the next I was laid flat out on the corner. A nice guy came up and sat down beside me and asked if I was okay. I shook my head and said, “I don’t know. I just went down. I’m not really sure what happened.” We sat there for a few seconds and then he helped me up and I made my way home to clean up and sit in a pile of ice.  The whole way home I played the fall in my head. Two seconds. It probably took me two seconds to look away and up hurting for a week.

  Which is to say, I would be a disaster as a Bull Rider. Nobody played football this past Sunday since there’s a week off between the playoffs and the Super Bowl. But lots of sports happened, foremost among them for my money was the 2010 Tampa Invitational on the Professional Bull Riders tour. It’s no joke. Not to me or an ever-increasing fan base or the folks who market the NFL and also the PBR. Fox Sports has started broadcasting bull riding on Sundays alongside their football coverage. It may be seen as small town but anyone who’s been following knows it is big business. More than 100 million viewers watch PBR every year. As opposed to football, bull riding has a global presence, particularly in Mexico and South America. Adriano Moraes, one of the greatest bull riders in the history of the sport, is just one of the many riders from Brazil.

One time, Moraes tore his bicep, had it wrapped and kept riding. Here’s Ty Murray (he’s married to the poet, Jewel) to tell you about the rules:

Sports Desk: Every Day We March [by Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

 Jan. 18, 2010. Martin Luther King Day Edition.

 It’s a shame the Baltimore Ravens lost this week. I was pulling for them for all kinds of reasons. First, I love Peyton Manning but I’m a little tired of those Colts. I tend to be in the group that feels that team doesn’t really have it without him and as much as I love and respect virtuosity I do like to see a team where the talent is pretty equal across the board. I like some smash-mouth football. And I like Baltimore. I like the food. I like the music. I love Spank Rock so much I just can’t keep still. And there’s a way the sky gets orange at sunset and washes over all that brick that makes you think, “Oh, yeah. Orioles.” And just smile in amazement.  Like New Orleans it is a city that could use a championship to bring continued national attention to the devastating racial and class divisions that have created an unending cycle of poverty and violence.  Both are cities that should be in the mind of any compassionate American. They show us what is best and worst in us. Which is a lot like sports.

The other reason I wanted Baltimore to stick around a bit has to do with Linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo (right). 

On April 23, 2009 Ayanbadejo wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Huffington post in which he asked what the big deal was about same-sex marriage and came out against Prop 8.

The world may be changing but it’s no small thing for a NFL player to speak out against homophobia. One need only look at the recent behavior of Kansas City Chiefs’ running back Larry Johnson whose twitterfeed was the site of numerous homophobic comments directed at fans after his team lost. It’s not surprising that homophobia still has a fairly open presence in professional sports but it’s unfortunate. And it makes the comments of Ayanbadejo all the more heartening.

 So I was rooting for The Ravens and was awfully sad to see them go.  Luckily there’s another team I love that happens to have a player who’s spoken out against Proposition 8. Enter Scott Fujita and the New Orleans Saints. Fujita is also a Linebacker. I know what you’re thinking. Why do Linebackers like homosexuals so much? It’s a mystery. I got bullied by a lot of football players in Middle School and now I wonder if Todd and Jimmy (the only two who really left me alone) were actually linebackers. I’d like to think so. It’s good to have allegiances and yesterday as I watched the Tivo’d games I found myself just liking that position better.

 I’m kidding but only kind of. Sports are about stories and allegiances. I try to tell that to my friends who love to write poems and hate to watch sports. Every game has a narrative arc that is, in many ways, influenced by the stories of the players. Scott Fujita is no exception.  Here’s Scott:

You might pause when you look at him and consider his last name. Scott Fujita was born to Caucasian parents and given up for adoption at 6 weeks. He was adopted by Helen and Ron Fujita. Helen is white. His father is Japanese American and was born in an Arizona internment camp during WWII. Fujita identifies as Japanese American and has cited his father and grandparent’s internment as one of the driving forces behind his stand against Prop. 8. In a response to Ayanbadejo’s Huffington Post piece Fujita is quoted as saying:

I hope he's right in his prediction, and I hope even more that it doesn't take that long. People could look at this issue without blinders on...the blinders imposed by their church, their parents, their friends or, in our case, their coaches and locker rooms…I wish they would realize that it's not a religion issue. It's not a government issue. It's not even a gay/straight issue or a question of your manhood. It's a human issue. And until more people see that, we're stuck arguing with people who don't have an argument.

 Is Fujita’s open-mindedness reason enough to root for the Saints? Maybe. If you need another reason we might consider the plight of that city and the terrible events in Haiti this past week.  New Orleans is a city America forgot. Or, perhaps more appropriately put, New Orleans is a city white America celebrated in, got drunk in, staggered down the streets of all the while ignoring the fact that they were in one of the poorest cities in the country. When the storm hit we were faced with footage that spoke as much to our own longstanding complicity in the devastation of a community as to anything else:

 

We talk of a city “coming back.” In terms of New Orleans one wonders what that means when the city was always a testament to both the remarkable fruits of cultural crossroads and the hopelessness of poverty, lack of decent public education and segregation. And yet, if one is going to say New Orleans is recovering or coming into a new era one has to think about The Saints. Quarterback Drew Brees has spoken of coming to New Orleans in the hopes of helping to rebuild the city. And one only needs to look at the fans both inside and outside of the stadium to see that the run this team is on is about a lot more than football. All over the stadium you see people holding up signs saying “We Believe.” It’s not the same as when the Red Sox fans held up signs with the same slogan. It’s about something bigger. The population in New Orleans has risen above 300,000 for the first time since the storm. At the same time the schools remain among the worst in the country. The last rounds of people are being removed from FEMA housing, many of whom have nowhere to go.  It’s a story we mustn’t forget because it is far from over.

 And if you just like the body doing beautiful things then watch Reggie Bush. He’s a poem out there. He’s coming into himself and it is beautiful to behold.

 Two teams. Two players urging equality. As always there are winners and losers. In real life the lines between the two aren’t always so clear. When children sit in schools that can’t support them, when the mentally and physically ill can’t get decent care, when people are denied basic human rights, we all lose. And maybe sports don’t seem important in the face of all that but it’s a brave thing for a man to stand up and speak out when he knows most of the people around him will think less of him for doing it. It’s worth watching and cheering for.

Sports Desk [by Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

I am writing this post from North Carolina, after walking the farm and talking of heavy machinery with my friend Aaron and his girlfriend Ashley. We do this at the end of every residency at Warren Wilson, where I teach. We put down our books and walk to the fields. I often hear my voice as I’m talking and realize it is different, closer to the way the voices sounded where I grew up as opposed to the cities I’ve lived in so long and now call my home. Aaron is a farmer and every walk is a lesson. He’s taught me about hoop houses and horses and once we almost found the mushroom farm we were looking for. Today he looked steadily at me and said, “Today we’re going to look at heavy machinery.” And then he said, “You’re going to like this. Every piece has a story.” 

At first we looked at older and larger machines. There was a grader being used like a sculpture. It was made in Indianapolis and even Aaron had to think for some time about what it might do in the fields. He figured it out and we all walked around it and touched the gears that don’t get used anymore. We walked to one barn and looked at the combine and I thought of Larkin, which says something about where I came from and where I am now. And then the tractors! John Deere. Have you ever been in a John Deere store? It’s beautiful. We had one in Middletown and when we went I’d sometimes take the toy tractor I had. I can’t explain the greens and the yellows in that place.  What they did to me: It was like being in a church. Or a barn full of dinosaurs. It was quiet in the store and we’d go there to get parts. Never a new tractor. Once you had one you’d never need another. I think Aaron said his is from the 70’s.

 We stood by the tractors and started to talk. Had I grown up on a farm? No. But there were farms all around and we’d drive past them and the kids I went to school with worked and lived on them. Ashley said her mom had grown up not far from me and we talked about tobacco, the rows of drying barns all along the Connecticut River. I remember. All the older kids leaving school to pick and how the nets lined the road. How tobacco in Connecticut meant the only Jai alai outside of Miami because all those guys would come up to pick. That was how sports came into my life. You lived in a small town. You farmed or you worked in a blue-collar job. If you wanted to get out you played sports or you marched in the band. And if you stayed in town you played sports too and talked about it for the rest of your life.

How did it begin for me? Loving sports? I certainly couldn’t play. With my eyes and my bad balance catching anything was a ridiculous and often risky proposition. But I loved them. I loved the sounds of the games. I loved watching the older kids on the bus carrying their gear.  I liked the crowd cheering on the television and the Cokes my father would drink from green glass bottles as he watched.  And though I love boxing and baseball the first sport I remember loving was football. I liked watching with him even when I didn’t understand what was going on. At some point I got a football helmet and I’d put it on and run around my grandparents’ dining room table with  “I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends” playing. Where’s the instant replay of that?

 I think it really began with Mister Rogers. Lynn Swann went on Mister Rogers and talked about doing ballet. And he danced. I was smitten:

 

This Week: Sports Desk, Alaska Adventures, Akiro Kirasawa, and Endings

We've got lots to look forward to this week!  First up:  to take us through Super Bowl season and beyond is Sports Desk, by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (left).  Gabrielle Calvocoressi's second book of poems, Apocalyptic Swing was recently published by Persea books. She lives in Los Angeles.  We'll also be posting Anne Caston's diaries from her recent trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, where she teaches in the English Department MFA program of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  Composer and film scholar Lewis Saul has already started posting about the films of Akira Kurasawa, now playing -- all thirty of them! -- at the Film Forum in NYC.  After a long hiatus, our financial correspondent stops by with sage advice.  Finally, we're thrilled that Joy Katz returns with lively posts about how poems end. 

-- sdh