Jim Daniels’ most recent collection of poems is Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press. He has published many collections of fiction; written four produced screenplays; and his collection of essays, An Ignorance of Trees, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2025. He has edited or co-edited six anthologies, most recently RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music. He is a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and currently teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA Program.
“It kills me to lose. If I’m a troublemaker, and I don’t think that my temper makes me one, then it’s because I can’t stand losing. That’s the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first
—“To do what he did has got to be the most tremendous thing I’ve ever seen in sports.” -- Pee Wee Reese
Susan, you must allow me to condescend This once. I suppose you mean well, but Is Godot what they really need off there in Sarajevo? Wouldn't it be more worthwhile, And amusing, to offer some gallows comedy About the awful life they've all been living?
Of course, everyone needs to earn a living, And Beckett may be a better bet than "Muse, descend, And help me write, right now, the comedy All Yugoslavia's been waiting for." Better the butt Of a few ephemeral lampoons while The neverending crisis lasts than for there
To be new proofs that the Muse is rarely there When she is summoned. Bad faith? Who's not living, After all, one kind of lie or another? And while There are hopefuls and a stage to send Clowns on, there's life at the box office. But Can't we, in hindsight, posit an original comedy?
One germane to the situation: a comedy of terrorism that would show unshaven Serbs their Visages, complacently corrupt as Joey Butt- Afuoco, smirking and working for a living In prime time; show Croats gloating at the end Of what little civilization they had; as, meanwhile,
Muslims pray for a new jihad. What would Simone Weil Have woven from such contradictories, what comedy of a Godot-less and godless world without end, Rhymeless and unreasoning? Susan, Susan, there Would be more comfort in Sarajevo from the Living Theater's Frankenstein than from the droning sackbut
Of Samuel Beckett. Leave them alone. But, If you must meddle, offer an evening of Kurt Weill. Have Bob Hope tell them life's worth living. Appease them with sentimental comedy By anyone but Beckett, and let is moral be: There, With the grace of God, go we. But don't condescent.
Pretend you're human. And smile. Send but A sentence to where they're waiting: Life's worthwhile, And all's forgiven in the comedy we are still living.
--- by Tom Disch (Poetry magazine, March 1996)
(Ed note: In 1993, Susan Sontag went to Sarajevo to stage a production of Waiting for Godot. Thomas Michael Disch was a celebrated American science fiction writer, critic, and poet. You can read more about him here. sdl)
Glad to be back in the desert After all the wasted years; The javelinas of the 1950s Are gone now of course But new ones have arrived and they still need water only A few times during the year; The big saguaro cacti can be Two hundred years old and When a beautiful young king snake Went looking for a place to hide I knew exactly how it felt although I'm not quite eighty yet. Look! There's a female tarantula.
Jews all over the world are observing Passover this week. On the first night (and for some on the second and final nights as well) we gather around for the Seder, a ritual meal during which we retell the story from the Book of Exodus when the Jews, led by Moses, fled slavery and captivity in Egypt. This year Passover is especially meaningful because as we celebrate our freedom at home, we are mindful that there remain 59 hostages who were taken from Israel by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 and who are being held captive in the Gaza strip. We pray for their release. For more about the importance of this ritual, I encourage you to listen to this interview with Rachel Polin-Goldberg, whose son Hersch was murdered by Hamas while in captivity.
At the close of the Seder meal, we sing several traditional songs, including Echad Mi Yodea (Who Knows One), which was the inspiration for the dance (above) by Israeli-born choreographer Ohad Naharin. The song enumerates the Jews' faith, beliefs and traditions, founded in the affirmation of One God and summing up in the recognition of God's thirteen attributes. You can find an English translation here.
I wanted to make you a Thesaurus. Feed you words He defined, and make synonyms fall from your mouth.
and be options. Remember, Queen Anne’s Lace was royalty but now are weeds. On walks through Eden you would grasp handfuls and place them in your hair; as though already you knew what it was like to be dethroned.
Unfinished portrait of FDR by artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff (1888-1980), April 12, 1945
<< President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. He had been inaugurated on January 20th for his unprecedented fourth term as president. He was 63. He looked like a dying man and suffered from very high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, possibly melanoma. He was weakened by post-polio syndrome and the strain of governing the nation during the Great Depression and leadin the allies to defeat the Germans, the Japanese, and Mussolini's Italy.
FDR succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage (stroke) while at Warm Springs, Georgia, the polio treatment center he had created in the late 1920s. On his prior visits, he had always come away feeling rejuvenated from the exercise and friendships and warm water. He was at home, the Little White House, while sitting for his portrait and chatting with friends. "I've got a terriifc headache," he said. He never regained consciousness.
My mother received this cookbook as a wedding gift and passed it on to me many years ago. It remains one of my favorites, not because of the recipes though there are some good ones, but because this book is responsible for kindling my love of cooking and poetry, especially poetry that rhymes.
The recipes are punctuated with light verse to serve as mnemonics for proper technique. For example, the captions to a series of photos illustrating loaves of bread read:
This is the well-made bread about which we’ve all read; It’s so easy to make, so come, on, let’s bake.
See what results if the oven’s too hot; decreased volume and over-brown top.
If the oven’s too slow, the crust will be pale, the texture’ll be porous; it’s sure to fail.
In homemade bread, especially rye, you know there’s more than meets the eye.
and on and on through yeasted breads and rolls, specialty loaves, quick breads and muffins.
My mother was a competent cook though not an enthusiastic one. She fully embraced the post-WWII convenience foods such as frozen TV dinners, boxed macaroni and cheese, and canned soup. It seemed that for years everything was made with a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, with its sponge-like brown bits suspended in a gelatinous goo. I loved those meals.
They were children of immigrants, my parents, who left the Bronx in the 1950s, first to New Jersey, then to Rockland County, New York, where my mother found work as a school teacher while my dad worked a salesman ("plastics"). From the outside, our's was a typical suburban development home. Not so inside.
My mother was a long-time subscriber to both Women’s Day and Family Circle magazines, with their projects for the thrifty homemaker (“Feed a Family of Four on Fifty Dollars a Week!” “Transform Your Home with Color in One Weekend!” and “Bring the Outdoors In with Rustic Cedar Shingles!” The latter project transformed a wall in my parents’ bedroom with hours of furious hammering.).
My father was a scavenger who often arrived home with odds and ends he’d picked up while making his sales calls in and around New York City. The combination of mom's and dad's talents was on full display in our kitchen where one wall was covered with silver metallic wallpaper illustrated with scenes from the Folies Bergere, done up in pink and black; the floor was covered with carpet tiles in every color; and the cabinet pulls were ringed with the colored plastic inserts to 45 RPM records. My mother made new curtains for every season, some quite beautiful.
The crowning glory of the kitchen was the table--a wood slab that my dad refinished with pockmarks to make it appear aged--suspended from the ceiling with picture wire. One day I arrived home from school and Noah, our large white German shepherd, was reclining on the table as it swung gently to and fro. Meals at that table were an adventure as one had to take care to avoid the wires while passing dishes. You could lose an arm. At my mother's insistence, my dad eventually anchored the table to the floor with more wire.
Years of preparing meals for our family of six, on top of full-time work, took their toll. When I was in my early teens, my mother declared a moratorium on cooking. My two sisters and I would have to take over responsibility for dinners several times a week. She delivered this news as if it were a punishment and my sisters took it as such but I thought it a grand opportunity to experiment. We were told we could cook whatever we liked; my mother would shop though she refused to buy exotic ingredients, like ground black pepper, or nutmeg. “You don’t need that,” she said, crossing off those items on our shopping lists.
I remember my attempt at Moussaka, the Greek casserole of eggplant and ground beef baked under a layer of béchamel. Is there a sound more dreaded to the cook than that of diners' forks silently pushing a poorly executed entrée around a dinner plate? Finally, my father put his fork down and looked across the table at my mother. “Renee,” he said, mouthing his words, “I don’t like it.” The leftovers were fed to Noah, who devoured them without complaint and in short order deposited them on the carpet-tiled kitchen floor.
We love last lines. The endings of favorite novels enter the mind and lodge there. Scott Fitzgerald’s majestic conclusion of The Great Gatsby is a favorite: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Hemingway concludes The Sun Also Rises with a bitterly ironic line of dialogue enlivened by an unusual choice of adjective: “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” The terseness at the end of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is no less memorable: “For there she was.”
For their full impact, the great endings depend on the narratives that precede them. But a surprising number will be seen to have a meaning and a charm even when removed from their context. This is true of several of the lines I’ve quoted, and others spring to mind. When Dostoevsky brings Crime andPunishment to its finish, he leaves the door open for subsequent developments. He dangles the possibility of his hero’s redemption, then says matter-of-factly: “That might be the subject of a new story—our present story is ended.” Herman Melville airs a similar sentiment but with an effect that is both eerie and menacing at the close of The Confidence Man: “Something further may follow from this Masquerade.”
The last line of Sholom Aleichem’s story “A Yom Kippur Scandal”—“Gone forever”—concludes its narrative beautifully while making this reader believe it could perform the same function admirably for a half dozen others.
Your task for next week is to write the last sentence of a nonexistent story—either a story that we can imagine or one that we would yearn to read strictly on the basis of your sentence. The winning entry may imply a specific narrative—or it may be so suggestive that readers will be inspired to supply the writing that culminates in the sentence.
It doesn’t have to be long—just unforgettable.
For the entries generated back in November 2014, click here.
And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market — the quips, the witticisms, the slant adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears, their tears confused with their diamond earrings, their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat, their response and your performance twinned. The jokes over the phone. The memories packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act. Who will do it again? That's it: no one; imitators and descendants aren't the same.
from the archive; first posted January 29, 2009. John Updike (March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009) was dying when he wrote the poem.
“Always be positive,” said the neutron “But I’m not feeling well” said the electron With a tear in the eye of its unsmiling little face “The key is to always be positive ”Rejoined the neutron impassively, un- Locking the potential of the nearby neutrinos “I don’t believe in keys” the negatively Charged ion chimed in, “which tend To dissolve at the sub-atomic level As do chimes for that matter” “That’s your position” said the neutron And very soon after rings out the sound of Lively laughter: “the keys Are there, man — they’re just smaller” Everything negative frowned And there was much rejoicing
-- Loren Goodman
from The Lab & from the archives (February 9, 2009)
I am not a blogger, I am a poet. This week though, I was both. And it was thrilling—scary and vulnerable, fun and really pleasing. In determining the direction this fifth and final blog might take, some favorite go-to poems came to mind. Frank O’Hara’s “Why I Am Not a Painter” is one that I constantly return to. Oranges are pretty great. So is the color orange. Sardines aren’t so bad either. What I really love it for is its ability to say so much without saying anything at all, what it says about the composing process, about what it is to be an artist and a notice-er. It’s the sort of poem that asks for noticing— It’s plainly spoken, but honest and exposed in its plainness. (The speaker says, “Oh.” That’s all he needs to say.) I’m now going to read it again. You should too:
Why I Am Not a Painter [by Frank O’Hara]
I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. "Sit down and have a drink" he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. "You have SARDINES in it." "Yes, it needed something there." "Oh." I go and the days go by and I drop in again. The painting is going on, and I go, and the days go by. I drop in. The painting is finished. "Where's SARDINES?" All that's left is just letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. Pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. Then another page. There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet. My poem is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
We need so many words to express a word, twelve full poems to get at orange without ever using the word itself. This is why I spend so much time close-reading with my composition students. We spent an hour yesterday coming up with and interpreting over 50 definitions for “critical inquiry.” We could have continued the conversation well into the afternoon, asking things like— Do we inquire into issues that trouble us, or is it more of an uncertainty? Is it uncertainty or a crisis of belief? Are we destabilizing those beliefs or questioning their validity? Do we mean validity or is it a matter of global stakes? Are personal stakes a part of global stakes, or is it the other way around? If we have a personal investment in what’s being researched, is it more difficult to be critical? Is it important to be critical of our own input as much as others’? What do we really mean by critical? Not taking texts at face value? Pushing texts beyond summary into the realm of further understanding? Does further understanding, the journey of discovery, ever really have an end? Is discovery the process or the product? …
And now I’ve written twelve lines sparked from O’Hara’s poem (and therefore oranges?) in which the poem isn’t mentioned at all. Part of me says, “Whoops!” The other part says, “Well, yeah. That’s how it works.”
“There should be / so much more, not of orange, of / words, of how terrible orange is / and life. Days go by.” These are my favorite lines. Words (and therefore oranges?) are exalted here. There are not enough of them. But they’re also terrible in the ways that life is both terrible and wonderful. Poetry attempts to expand the limits language places on our ability to share human experience. Days go by, more life happens, more words are needed to fully experience it.
One of my dearest friends is moving from Milwaukee to New York City in a few weeks, something I did six years ago. Even now I can’t adequately explain what that experience was like – how I felt necessarily pulled to the city, tethered to it as though my left arm rented a studio apartment in Gramercy while the rest of me went for daily runs along Lake Michigan. My friend’s experience is similar, it seems, but there’s no telling which part of her exists where. She might not know until she receives her first piece of mail addressed to her Astoria zip code. And even then, there should be so much more.
"SARDINES" by Mike Goldberg
It’s troubling to always be attempting this sort of explanation of human experience. Being a poet is actually quite masochistic. Even O’Hara says, “I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not.” This is not to say that visual artistic methods are “easier” or less limiting than verbal/textual. I really don’t know because I am not a painter either. What I do know is that Mike Goldberg’s painting called “SARDINES” has no sardines in it, the same way that the poem called “ORANGES” has no oranges (or orange) in it. But the painting is actually full of sardines – the thought process following sardines, their implications, their many versions and colors and patterns, shapes and non-shapes, and the remnants of the word itself scrawled and painted over. We do what we can to represent the days that go by. We try to understand our lives and convey that understanding so that others might better understand theirs too. It’s a cyclical process, both terrible and wonderful.
Returning from a walk across the Dug Road bridge and into the Ludlowville
woods, Joe carried some violets we had picked. An old man with a handsome
Labrador going in the opposite direction asked, “Are they for Easter?” “No,” Joe said.
“For Passover.” Joe was nearly four, I nearly thirty-nine.
In May of that year, 1987, Joe and I approached the Dug Road bridge, and there
was no one in our path. Joe whispered: “Go quietly over the bridge, so you don’t wake
up the geese.” The next day I repeated his words to him when we came to the place.
He immediately started singing. “Why?” “Because the geese are awake,” he said.
The day we went to the bird sanctuary at Sapsucker Woods, Joe made up a song,
“Fish Birds on the Sea,” to the tune of the verse introducing “Jingle Bells”: “Dashing
through the snow.” That night I asked him to tell me a story. “Okay,” he said. “Once
upon a time, there was a little boy named Daddy.
Then, out of the blue, “‘God made me,” he said.
How did this poem begin for you?
I seldom leave the house without a little notebook tucked into my jacket pocket or the back pocket of my trousers. Ideas, titles for poems I’d like to write, memories, overheard phrases, quotes, dreams, jests, anecdotes, lists of books I want to read, even mundane lists of errands that need doing may find their way into the notebook. With defunct notebooks, I can be careless. All the better when a lost notebook turns up and on one of its pages a cryptic phrase from 1987 summons a delightful memory. My son Joe made some arresting statements that year, and he even wrote (or dictated to me) a poem a day for several weeks. A phrase about the Dug Road bridge reminded me of walks he and I took that spring. That’s how I came to write “God Made Me.”
David Lehman is a poet and professional writer. He edited The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His recent books of poems include The Morning Line and Poems in the Manner Of.
Clare Banks is the author of Notes on Endings, forthcoming from Terrapin Books, and associate editor for Smartish Pace. A recipient of two Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards, her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Iron Horse, Boulevard, Poet Lore, and Mississippi Review, among others. She was nominated for the Best New Poets 2023 anthology by Mississippi Review, was a 2023 finalist in Radar Poetry's Coniston Prize and a 2024 finalist in Iron Horse Literary Review's National Poetry Month Prize. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and lives in Baltimore City where she co-hosts The HOT L Poets Series.
When Kirk Gibson hit perhaps the most unlikely home run in baseball history – when, hobbled with injuries, he pinch-hit with two out and a man on first base, and the Dodgers were one pitch away from losing the game, and with one swing Gibson reversed the team’s fortunes – play-by-play man Jack Buck said “I don’t believe what I just saw.” Beautiful: a totally colloquial line of iambic tetrameter. Vin Scully, describing the same at-bat, let a few seconds of silence pass before saying, “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."
I am going from memory and I may have a word or two wrong there, but the point of this piece is an appreciation of play-by-play announcers and the memorable things they say. This (2016) is Vin Scully’s last year as the voice of the Dodgers, and I dedicate these musings to him, the red-headed gentleman who invites viewers to pull up a chair and join him in Dodger Stadium.
On Labor Day [2016], I watched the Dodgers trounce the Diamondbacks, 10-2, for the pleasure of watching the action under the guidance of Scully. The TV execs are smart enough to show us a lot of Dodger games called by Scully this year. Unlike most announcers, he does the whole game unassisted, unaccompanied by what used to be called a color man -- usually an ex-star who is articulate, amiable, and knowledgeable (e.g. Don Sutton with the Braves, Rick Monday on the Dodgers' radio broadcasts, Bill White with the Yankees in the 1970s, the late Ralph Kiner with the Mets). To go solo is quite a feat. Even experienced play-by-play men consider it a challenge. But Vinny, who has had excellent partners over the years, doesn't need one.
On Monday evening, Arizona's Socrates Brito stepped to the plate. Scully explained -- "for the kids, really" -- who Socrates was. Vinny had done his homework. We learned "what Labor Day is all about." It was in June 1894 that the first Monday in September was designated Labor Day. In 1916 the eight-hour working day became the norm and the obscenity of child labor was put to rest. Canada is said to have originated the idea of a holiday to celebrate the labor force. I didn't know these facts. But I did appreciate it when, after the history lesson, Vinny described Zack Greinke at the plate. Greinke, not an easy out, obliged the pitcher to make a lot of pitches. "And after all that laboring," Scully said, "Greinke goes down for the second out." Possibly my favorite moment of the evening came when: a wicked curve ball -- can't remember whose -- caused the batter to fall down like a knocked-down boxer "for a mandatory eight-count." It was "a genuflection for a great breaking ball."
Many anecdotes about Scully made the rounds as he completed his astounding career – having broadcast or telecast Dodger games since 1950. Everyone loves his call of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965. In October of that year, when Koufax on two days’ rest shut out the Minnesota Twins to win the World Series for his team, Vinny said, “Sandy, two days ago you said you felt like a hundred years old. How do you feel now?” “Like a hundred and one,” Koufax replied.
Every so often Scully will surprise you with a literary allusion, and he usually doesn’t repeat himself, though Milton’s “They also serve who only stand and wait” has served him well for years. When he broke the news of the untimely death of Don Drysdale, the great pitcher who had become his broadcast partner, Scully said, with simple eloquence, “Never have I been asked to make an announcement that hurts me as much as this one. And I say it to you as best I can with a broken heart.”
Left: Sandy Koufax (center) and the late Tommy Lasorda at a ceremony honoring Vin Scully at Dodger Stadium, May 3, 2017
Added on August 4, 2022:
Vin Scully died this week, a year after his beloved wife passed. He was 94. The eulogists were justly extravagant in their praise of the Hall of Fame broadcaster, voice of the Dodgers from 1950 through 2016. Nor did the plaudits come exclusively fom Dodger fans. Honoring Scully, the team's bitterest rivals, the Giants of San Francisco, did something very classy prior to Wednesday's evening's contest between the two squads. Jon Miller, the Giants' lead broadcaster since 1997 and one of the best in the business, calls him "the greatest broadcaster there ever was." Miller does a tremendous impression of Vin - in English,Japanese, and Spanish!
Here's Vin's call of the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game on September 9, 1965. "I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium is the loneliest place in the world right now" on 9:43 PM. Koufax ended the game with a strikeout; in fact he struck out the side in both the eighth and ninth innings. "Swung on and missed, a perfect game!" Andf then Vin had the wit to keep quiet and let the crowd noise take over "in the city of angels."
When the Sandy Koufax statue was unveiled at Dodger Stadium in June of this year, the great southpaw said “Vin Scully is the greatest of all time, period."
Some of Vin Scully's best lines, with thanks to Houston Mitchell of the Los Angeles Times:
“Football is to baseball as blackjack is to bridge. One is the quick jolt. The other the deliberate, slow-paced game of skill, but never was a sport more ideally suited to television than baseball. It’s all there in front of you. It’s theater, really. The star is the spotlight on the mound, the supporting cast fanned out around him, the mathematical precision of the game moving with the kind of inevitability of Greek tragedy. With the Greek chorus in the bleachers!”
“He pitches as though he’s double-parked.” — on Bob Gibson
A Joey Gallo home run off Clayton Kershaw looked like "a marble" when it went way over the right field fence.
“He’s like a tailor; a little off here, a little off there and you’re done, take a seat.” — on Tom Glavine
“It’s a mere moment in a man’s life between the All-Star Game and an old-timers’ game.”
"Statistics are used the way a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support, not illumination."
“Roberto Clemente could field the ball in New York and throw out a guy in Pittsburgh.”
"Losing feels worse than winning feels good."
"Fernando ready, and the strike-two pitch is hit back to the box, dribbling to second, [Juan] Samuel on the bag, throws to first for the double play! Fernando Valenzuela has pitched a no-hitter at 10:17 in the evening on June three 29th, 1990. If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!"
Calling Hank Aaron‘s 715th home run: “What a marvelous moment for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. … It is over, at 10 minutes after 9 in Atlanta, Georgia, Henry Aaron has eclipsed the mark set by Babe Ruth. You could not, I guess, get two more opposite men. The Babe, big and garrulous and oh so sociable and oh so immense in all his appetites. And then the quiet lad out of Mobile, Alabama — slender and stayed slender throughout his career. Ruth, as he put on the poundage and the paunch, the Yankees put their ballplayers in pinstripe uniforms, because it made Ruth look slimmer. But they didn’t need pinstripe uniforms for Aaron in the twilight of his career.”
His final words as a Dodgers broadcaster:
“You know, friends, so many people have wished me congratulations on a 67-year career in baseball, and they’ve wished me a wonderful retirement with my family, and now, all I can do is tell you what I wish for you. May God give you, for every storm, a rainbow; for every tear, a smile; for every care, a promise; and a blessing in each trial. For every problem life seems, a faithful friend to share; for every sigh, a sweet song, and an answer for each prayer. You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know, in my heart, I’ve always needed you more than you’ve ever needed me, and I’ll miss our time together more than I can say. But, you know what, there will be a new day, and, eventually, a new year, and when the upcoming winter gives way to spring, ooh, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodger baseball. So, this is Vin Scully wishing you a pleasant good afternoon, wherever you may be.”
So pull up a chair and listen to the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's greatest pitching feat.
Sometimes the humor of play-by-play announcers is wonderful if unintentional. Michael Kay, the Yankees’ TV announcer, remarked that some pitcher had a zaftig ERA.” The color man, I forget who it was, a former player, David Cone maybe, looked blank. “What,” Kay said. “You don’t know zaftig?” The other guy said sheepishly that he may heard the word “in English class.”
The Mets at the moment have an outstanding trio calling their games on television: Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling. The versatile Howie Rose and Josh Lewin handle the radio. Columbia graduate Cohen (a government major) is like a one-man encyclopedia of Mets’ history. Here is his description of one of the greatest catches in Mets’ history, the catch made by Endy Chavez in the National League Championship Series in 2006, which the Mets ultimately lost to St. Louis:
“Edmonds at first and one out, and Pérez deals. Fastball hit in the air to left field, that's deep, back goes Chávez, back near the wall, leaping, and....he made the catch!! He took a home run away from Rolen! Trying to get back to first is Edmonds... he's doubled off! And the inning is over! Endy Chávez saves the day! He reached up high over the left field wall, right in front of the visitors' bullpen, and pulled back a two run homer! He went to the apex of his leap, and caught it in the webbing of his glove, with his elbow up above the fence. A miraculous play by Endy Chávez, and then Edmonds is doubled off first, and Oliver Perez escapes the 6th inning. The play of the year, the play maybe of the franchise history, for Endy Chávez. The inning is over.”
I savor "He went to the apex of his leap" followed by a sterling example of iambic pentameter: "and caught it in the webbing of his glove,"
All announcers have their signature phrases. When the Mets’ win, Howie Rose says, “Put it in the books.” The late Bob Murphy -- who could radiate enthusiasm when, in the September of a last-place season, the Mets turned an ordinary 6-4-3 double play -- would say, after every Mets’ victory, that he’d be back “with the happy recap” after the commercial break. At game’s end, Cohen says “and the ballgame is over,” accenting the “o” in “over.” Cohen’s home run call is “it’s outta here!”John Sterling, the Yankees' voice on the radio, stretches the phrase "the Yankees win!" -- and then repeats it -- with a kind of euphoria implying that God is in heaven and all is right with the world. Joe Nuxhall would sign off his Cincinnati Reds' broadcast by saying goodbye from the "old leftander, rounding third and heading for home." Nuxhall, who did Reds' games for forty years, was the youngest player ever to appear in a major league baseball game.
The classic home run call is Mel Allen’s when with a straw hat and a smile he covered the Yankees of Mantle, Maris, Berra, and Ford. When Mickey launched one, Mel would follow the course of the ball and conclude “it’s going. . going. . .gone.” I cannot leave unmentioned Russ Hodges’ immortal call of Bobby Thomson’s home run off Ralph Branca in the 1951 playoffs. “The Giants win the pennant!” he exclaimed and repeated the sentence four times.
What prompted this post was my dissatisfaction with the national announcers on TV and the whole strategy of continual chatter interrupted by graphs, statistics, interviews, close-ups of fans in the stands. I hate such current catch phrases as "are you kidding me!" or "do you believe it!" I hate statcast and "redemption" and other artificial sweeteners. I hate the phrase "If the season ended today. ." and all the hypotheticals that follow. But I admit to a soft spot for this common play-by-play sentence: "And the Mets are down to their final out." I used that phrase with a big grin when I told my wife about the tenth inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series between the Mets and the Boston Red Sox. Roger Angell headed his brilliant New Yorker piece on that unforgettable post-season with a palindrome: "Not So, Boston." In danger of wandering off message I think of the greatest cover phrase in the history of Sports Illustrated. It was when Pete Rose, after playing for Philadelphia and Montreal, returned to Cincinnati. "Rose is a Red." Gertrude Stein couldn't beat that.
A heartfelt apology: There are so many great play-by-play men whom I haven't named. . .but only because time is finite. Red Barber, a longtime Dodger announcer, joined Mel Allen and Phil Rizzuto in the Yankee booth in 1957. I always liked Red’s way of describing a failed pickoff attempt. "Nothing doing.” Barber, who was Vin Scully’s mentor, advised him not to root openly for the home team and to keep to facts. Radio announcers have no choice but to concentrate on each play rather than on marginal elements. Often I turn off the sound and listen to a radio feed of the visiting team's play-by-play guys.
from the archive; first posted October 15, 2018, revised after the death of Vin Scully
A smart man who has entered middle age should remain on a never-ending quest of introspection and self-analysis. The literary parallel to life’s span is in Charles Dickens’s short tale “The Child’s Story.” An unnamed wandering traveler interacts with ethereal versions of himself at every stop he makes, starting from early childhood, through adolescence, into middle age and then finally old age.
In his interpretation of the traveler’s meeting his early childhood self, Dickens [left] describes mainly physical sensations and how the newness of the world and its design imakes its impact: “The sky was so blue, and the sun was so bright, the water was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers were so lovely, and they heard such singing birds and saw so many butterflies, that everything was beautiful.”
When you are born a synesthetic, as I was, the development of physical sensation has a hundred times more potency. A quick google search of synesthesia defines it as a “rare neurological condition in which stimulation of one sense involuntarily triggers experiences in another sense.” I have, in the past, written several lengthy poems and essays covering my various experiences in that neurological condition, including the unique way I have seen letters and numbers, words and years. I expect to write something about "Voyelles," the sonnet by the teenage French poet Arthur Rimbaud, in he assigns colors to the vowels.
Case in point: I reached the age of awareness when I was five. I remember the 1988 Presidential race: my first taste of observing politics in America. In my kindergarten class, that fall, we wrote letters to the Republican and Democratic nominees, the sitting Vice President George H. W. Bush and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, respectively. And both of the candidates (or one of their staffers) sent a letter back to the class.
I cannot remember anything from what was written in Dukakis’s letter except that it addressed us a bit more formally than Bush’s did. Dukakis began with “dear class” while Bush said “dear kids.” Ironically, the stiffness of Dukakis’s manner made him seem more authoritative in my mind compared to Bush’s casualness. I say ironically, because I suppose being seen as casual must have humanized Bush with the rest of the electorate, and could very well have contributed to his commanding November win. My first lesson in politics then was that a warning not to be aloof from the desires of the masses, or you'll wind up on the losing side.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. How does having synesthesia come into play here? I’ll explain. We, the class, held our own mock election where the students could cast their ballots for either Bush or Dukakis. I synesthetically experienced the essence of George Bush as a brownish-orange color, while Dukakis evoked the essence of a springtime greenish color. Both colors were sufficiently masculine. The orange color seemed more disciplinarian though, and the green seemed mercurial and lax. I like green better. I went with Dukakis as my vote. I don’t remember who won in my class.
It has been written elsewhere that Dukakis intended his campaign to be about issues, while Bush preferred his to be one of symbols. In recorded histories of the ‘88 election, one reads a lot of descriptions of symbols, with Bush looking like a sure winner standing before the American flag, reciting the pledge of allegiance, and eating apple pie. These contrast with the forlorn symbols of prison inmates shuffling through revolving doors and Dukakis’s ludicrous photo op in a battle tank, wearing a helmet that made him look more like Snoopy on one of his imaginary dogfights with the Red Baron. I don’t find many descriptions of what the issues were, but it is clear that Bush successfully defined Dukakis as soft on crime and national defense. Of course, I don’t remember experiencing any of that. But I’ll always remember the orange and the green.
The great Doris Day, who died the other day [May 2019], was celebrated for her work in romantic comedies of the 1960s. She was box office gold with James Garner, Cary Grant, and Rock Hudson. But her real achievement was as a singer. In musical movies she gave outstanding performances as Ruth Etting (in Love Me or Leave Me in 1955) and as Mrs. Gus Kahn (in I'll See You in My Dreams in 1953). One of the finest of all Big Band vocalists, whose version of "Sentimental Journey" is a madeleine that can transport you to 1945, she sang with the Les Brown Orchestra when swing was king.
Maybe her biggest single hit was the Academy Award-winning song of 1956 in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much in which she played opposite James Stewart. In honor of Doris Day, "Che Sera, Sera" was sung at sing-alongs in smart clubs all over the nation yesterday.
Doris gets her own day in my Playlist:
from Playlist (12 / 17 / 17)
I live in Hitchcock’s America What does that mean It means the ride always ends in an amusement park and a girl and her uncle can have the same first name Cary Grant is suave Jimmy Stewart has a broken leg or a bruised psyche Doris Day’s voice fills the house Even the Jews and the blacks are white Even the brunettes are blonde I confess I’m at the end of my rope, spellbound by the notorious master of suspicion maybe Janet shouldn’t have taken that dough or had that tryst Joel McCrea tells America that all Europe’s lights are out and Priscilla Lane recites Emma Lazarus’s lines atop the Statue of Liberty -- DL
I know AWP just happened, and everyone can't stop talking about it. I used to go the conference but haven't attended for years. I can't say I miss it. But then again, I do miss the opportunity to have coffee or dinner with my poet friends. I woke up thinking of all the poets I love and miss, whom I only saw at AWP, poets like John Lane, for example, whose essays and poems I have always admired. I particularly love his poem, "Sweet Tea," which makes me laugh out loud. These days, laughter is so precious.
Sweet Tea
God rested on the seventh day, but early in the morning,
before the sun strained into the Southern sky,
she made sweet tea from scratch. She boiled the water
in a black kettle, put in the orange pekoe bags
and let them stand as the water perked, and then
she did what gods know to do: she heaped in Dixie
Crystal sugar while the brew was still warm as the day.
For God so loved the world she made sweet tea. For she served
the tea to anyone who admired her creation. To anyone
walking down the street of the wet new neighborhood,
to the mailman delivering early on that next day
of that second week, to the milkman in his truck, the black
man working in the yard, to the white man selling peaches
door-to-door. On God’s sidewalk there was an X scratched
by hobos. They knew to come to God’s back door and you’d
get a plate of leftovers and all the sweet tea you could
drink. They knew the sugared pints of contentment. They drank
sweet tea from God’s back steps and went on their wandering
way again.
For God knows sweet tea fills with love and refreshment from
any long train. For sweet tea is safe as an oak forest
camp. Sweet tea, clinks in jelly jars. Sweet tea,
sweeter as it stands. For God’s sake we brew it
like religion. For God’s sake we carry it now in styrofoam
cups in cars. We drink it in winter. We drink it always.
And this poem would not lessen sweet tea’s place in the creation.
Sweet tea is not fading from the Southern towns
like the Confederate flag. It lives in houses all over town.
Black folk brew it often as white folk. Take the flag off
the state capitol. It doesn’t mean anything to me.
But leave me my sweet tea, a recipe for being civil.
This poem stands cold sweet tea up as God’s chosen beverage.
The manifest Southern brew. When sad I draw figures
in the condensation of glasses of sweet tea. I connect
the grape leaves on the jelly jar, cast out any restaurant
that will not make it from scratch. When lonely I go
to the house of my beloved.
For I love a woman who makes sweet tea late at night to eat with
Chinese food. For her hands move like God’s through the ritual.
For it is as if she had learned it along with speaking in
tongues. For I love the way her hands unwrap the tea bags
and drop them in the water. For I love the unmeasured sugar
straight from the bag, the tap water from deep in the earth.
For the processes are as basic as making love.
For our bodies both are brown like suntans inside from years
of tea. For sweet tea is the Southern land we share, the town,
the past. When we kiss it is sweet tea that we taste as
our lips brush. When we are hot it is sweet tea we crave.
When we have children it will be sweet tea.
And they will learn tea along with Bible stories and baseball.
There’s a certain watchmaker’s quality to many of the poems in John Hawke’s collection Whirlwind Duststorm (published by the excellent Grand Parade Poets): assemblages of distinct parts meticulously pieced together into compact forms that give measure to grander, more abstract notions, while always being embedded in the quotidian.* Hawke’s descriptive precision and exactness of image are impressive, and they are often in tension with the open-ended nature of the poems themselves. This tension creates an enjoyably destabilizing effect for the reader, as when one stares too hard at an object and it begins to shimmer and blur, opening up the world from the particular to a more powerful and interesting ambiguity. The two poems that bookend the collection, “Axis” and “Dormition,” both achieve this effect.
John Hawke teaches literary studies at Monash University in Melbourne and is poetry editor of the Australian Book Review. His previous volume of poetry, Aurelia, was published by Cordite Press in 2015.
Axis
One sulphurous puff, then the white stick
is flicked spinning in a flare of sparks,
red globes throbbing down the harbour channel.
One vulnerable hand lifted, its sallow disclosure
pallid as the history of human error
pasted on placards, where arc-lights scatter
a brittle confetti: the florilegium of choice.
These itinerants marred by the stages of grieving
gather by handfuls at the terminus, swell into masses.
Some still bear marks of disfigurement
like mortal wounds, gashes insecurely bound,
heaped in the exhaustion of travel.
Most are older than usual, in loosely
drooping camisoles, or subsiding gowns.
A woman offers a baby she has never fed
to another for burial, passing in aura
through the mirror’s cathexis, the attendants
hunched in flag-bright uniforms,
paddling a ghost-train sleigh under the patchwork
awning of a coral tree, through scarlet petals
and tunnels of black opal. Then a steel door slams to.
Dormition
A mirror that refuses to light. Paired
black cockatoos patiently rowing
avenues of pleached hornbeams,
aurora hunters calculating degrees
of space grammar. The clutch and
groan of the grain elevator, laddered
as the scaffolding of Golgotha,
signals harvest: coils of feed grass
rolled silver under sheets of rain.
There was noise coming from your
house last night. The pipes rusting
closed deliver a treacle of ochre
and untraceable metals. That awful
Rachmaninoff under Richter’s piercing
thrumming of thrown daggers.
Lopped paspalum hovers yellow for days
on the steady pool of this late season.
I’m very comfortable. I’d prefer to sleep.
A fine rain hatches his skeletal shoes
crossing the light from the vestibule.
He doesn’t realise that he’s dead.
*A notable exception to this is the truly brilliant prose poem at the center of the collection, “The Wedding,” which, at eight pages, is too lengthy to post in full here but is alone worth seeking out the collection for. You can also read the terrific title poem, “Whirlwind Duststorm,” here.
Guest edited by Terence Winch—NEA Fellow and editor of the “pick of the week” on the Best American Poetry blog—the 2025 edition marks a poignant farewell to series editor David Lehman, celebrating more than three decades of poetic excellence.
For thirty-eight years, The Best American Poetry series has won widespread acclaim as the nation’s most influential and vital poetry anthology. BAP, which has inspired similar ventures abroad, has garnered plaudits for its ability to capture the zeitgeist of American poetry. This year’s anthology is guest edited by the esteemed poet and songwriter Terence Winch, who brings to the task his work as a musician and poetry editor as well as his many years of experience as head of publications at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Winch, known for his inspired selections on the Best American Poetry blog, curates a vibrant array of compelling voices.
The Best American Poetry 2025 is a landmark edition that not only showcases the finest contemporary American poetry but also honors David Lehman’s achievement as the anthology’s founding editor. “The list of editors is a who’s who of US poetry elites,” writes Oxford professor of poetry A. E. Stallings. “And behind it all, the poet David Lehman, the series editor, has labored quietly and diligently ensuring its continuity and continued relevance.”
Lehman’s vision and dedication have shaped these collections into much-anticipated annual events, sparking lively discussion, controversy on occasion, and always a jubilant affirmation of modern American poetry. This year’s edition stands as a testament to David Lehman’s legacy—and to the enduring power of poetry.
I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later to the greatness of Teddy Wilson "After You've Gone" on the piano in the corner of the bedroom as I enter in the dark
