Baseball and Writing

Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
back to plate.(His spring
de-winged a bat swing.)
They have that killer instinct;
yet Elston--whose catching
arm has hurt them all with the bat--
when questioned, says, unenviously,
"I'm very satisfied.We won."
Shorn of the batting crown, says, "We";
robbed by a technicality.

When three players on a side play three positions
and modify conditions,
the massive run need not be everything.
"Going, going . . . "Is
it?Roger Maris
has it, running fast.You will
never see a finer catch.Well . . .
"Mickey, leaping like the devil"--why
gild it, although deer sounds better--
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
one-handing the souvenir-to-be
meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
He is no feather."Strike! . . . Strike two!"
Fouled back.A blur.
It's gone.You would infer
that the bat had eyes.
He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, "Thanks, Mel.
I think I helped a little bit."
All business, each, and modesty.
Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
In that galaxy of nine, say which
won the pennant?Each.It was he.

Those two magnificent saves from the knee-throws
by Boyer, finesses in twos--
like Whitey's three kinds of pitch and pre-
diagnosis
with pick-off psychosis.
Pitching is a large subject.
Your arm, too true at first, can learn to
catch your corners--even trouble
Mickey Mantle.("Grazed a Yankee!
My baby pitcher, Montejo!"
With some pedagogy,
you'll be tough, premature prodigy.)

They crowd him and curve him and aim for the knees.Trying
indeed!The secret implying:
"I can stand here, bat held steady."
One may suit him;
none has hit him.
Imponderables smite him.
Muscle kinks, infections, spike wounds
require food, rest, respite from ruffians.(Drat it!
Celebrity costs privacy!)
Cow's milk, "tiger's milk," soy milk, carrot juice,
brewer's yeast (high-potency--
concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez--
deadly in a pinch.And "Yes,
it's work; I want you to bear down,
but enjoy it
while you're doing it."
Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
if you have a rummage sale,
don't sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
O flashing Orion,
your stars are muscled like the lion. 

Comments:-

A certain patience and understanding is required; a definite attention span; a willingness to do the research; to understand the details; to expect the unexpected occurrences that can and will arise, and disrupt the flow and rhythm of the game, and your writing. Writing is exciting and baseball is like writing.

The art and the zen of baseball has been widely and thoroughly examined and dissected by all manner of artists and aficionados; outside of Marianne Moore, the most entertaining purveyor being the fictional femme fatale, and poetry lover, Annie Savoy in the classic baseball movie Bull Durham (1988). Is baseball the best of all sports by which to read and write? Can a baseball fan duck out between innings, and sneak in half a page of a book, or scribble notes, or finish writing a paragraph; or a poem?

And now back to the game: It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel-a catcher's, as, with cruel puma paw. It's a pitcher's duel that will require all players in all positions: pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter; to execute and excel; to deliver a victory to the individual, thereby delivering victory to the team. Ms. Moore heralds the expertise of hero Mickey Mantle as he runs down a fly ball in center field, snatching the ball off the top of the wall like a wild animal snaring something from its treetop nest.

After Ms. Moore concludes her play by play, in which she finds a way to name drop a wide array of her favorite players, from Mickey Mantle to Roger Maris to Yogi Berra to Hector Lopez; she concludes her poem with a consideration of Yankee Stadium, which was demolished in favor a newer, more modern stadium in 2008:

Studded with stars in belt and crown,

the Stadium is an astrium.

O flashing Orion,

your stars are muscled like the lion.

Alas, while the title Baseball and Writing holds the promise of an examination, a correlation between baseball and writing, in the end, Ms. Moore's poem is almost exclusively about baseball; which of course is completely understandable to any baseball fan who's tried to write while watching a game.

Silence

My father used to say,

"Superior people never make long visits,

have to be shown Longfellow's grave

nor the glass flowers at Harvard.

Self reliant like the cat --

that takes its prey to privacy,

the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --

they sometimes enjoy solitude,

and can be robbed of speech

by speech which has delighted them.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;

not in silence, but restraint."

Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."

Inns are not residences. 

Comments:-

The speaker recalls how her father used to describe "superior people." The father begins by discussing what these people do on visits: they never stay for too long, and they don't need to be shown around, presumably because they can find the local attractions themselves.

Next, the poem moves into a graphic description of a cat running off with a mouse's tail dangling from his mouth. (Whoa, Dad.) The speaker's father then claims that, more generally, superior people also know when to keep quiet, because sometimes silence is the best response to being totally delighted or really moved.

Now, the speaker interrupts here to turn back to the father's discussion of visits. He's not exactly lying when he politely tells you to make his house your inn. You have to read more carefully into the words to see what's implied. An inn isn't your home. It's a place you stay only briefly.

The Fish

wade
through black jade
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the
sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices–
in and out, illuminating
the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron through the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly-fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.
All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice–
all the physical features of
ac-
cident–lack
of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
out on it; the chasm-side is
dead.
Repeated
evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive
its youth. The sea grows old in it. 

Comments:-

"The Fish," not properly an "animal poem," though its title suggests it, deepens our sense of this "unpreventable experience," this quality of life that despite the exuberance of living forms and immortal art, contains our death. It is an immensely powerful and bitter poem. It is full of a sense of infringement, violation, and injury; it is also resigned. "The Fish wade through black jade." It is not an easy, fishlike movement, but laborious. and the water is not liquid but stone, not translucent, but dark. One of the morosely-colored "crow-blue" mussels "keeps adjusting the ash heaps" on which it lies by opening and shutting itself; it is not a happy animal expression. The shell moves "like an injured fan." "The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave" again the water is seen as an unpleasantly solid substance do not have privacy; "the submerged shafts of the sun . . . move themselves . . . into the crevicesin and out." It is deliberate, not playful; not an expansive sea, through which anything can freely move, but a "sea of bodies." (Recall the sea of "A Grave" into which "men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave.") The water, this evilly forceful and solid mass, "drives a wedge of iron through the iron edge of the cliff." This violence is followed by a chaos where starfish, jellyfish, crabs, and submarine toadstools "slide each on the other." The sea is full of internal revulsion. What stands out on the "defiant edifice" of the cliff are "all external marks of abuse . . . ac -cident—lack of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes." The side of this chasm is dead. The poem ends:

Repeated
        evidence has proved that it can live
        on what cannot revive
                its youth. The sea grows old in it.

The accident is lack. The chasm side is permanently mutilated and abused by some mysterious unpurposeful purposefulness of nature. This strange poem is the work of a thirty-year-old woman whose rather unnervingly cool sympathies lie with a battered and violated nature. It is a poem about injury of wholeness, resentful but resigned deprivation. It contains the prophecy of "foiled explosiveness" that is suggested by the late poem "Then the Ermine:." The sea, with all its rushings of individual lives, all its bodies injured and insulted, grows old within its "dead" walls. How does one make up for such unintentional, natural desecration?

For what it is worth, one can invent a personal myth. One can try and convince oneself that life is worth efforts of affection and loving observation, that vicarious pleasures are real, that loss and desecration are only temporary setbacks in a vision that is essentially whole and infrangible. Myths, like dreams, express wishes, wishes to do away with limitations. Marianne Moore expresses her wishes with as much directness as she does her sense of limitation.