Win or Lose, Turn to Beowulf

By Robin Bates | Published: February 8, 2010

Drew Brees, Super Bowl MVPDrew Brees, Super Bowl MVP  

A few years back, if I remember the article correctly, I came across two interesting statistics about life in America on Super Bowl Sunday.  During the game the country’s crime drops to the lowest level of the year. Following the game, however, acts of spousal violence hit their highest levels of the year.  Presumably the latter are caused by the agony of losing, often made worse by drinking and by having lost money on the game. 

I’m writing most of this post before the Super Bowl so that I have a clear head since I expect to be either jubilant or downcast when it’s over (although I will not be drinking or gambling and, if the Colts lose, Julia and I will not be coming to blows). The 8th century Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf provides valuable help with winning and losing.

Let’s first, however, acknowledge the winners (whom I now know to be the Saints) and allow them the euphoria of the victory.  Beowulf captures the giddiness of such a moment in images of young warriors madly riding about on horses following the hero’s victory over Grendel.  Here they are:

Then away they rode, the older retainers
with many a young man following after,
a troop on horseback, in high spirits
on their bay steeds.  Beowulf’s doings
were praised over and over again.

And later:

Meanwhile, the Danes kept racing their mounts
down sandy lanes.  The light of day
broke and kept brightening.  Bands of retainers
galloped in excitement to the gabled hall
to see the marvel . . .

The marvel is Grendel’s severed arm, which perhaps we can think of as the Super Bowl Trophy.  There is even post-game commentary.  The bard breaks into song, putting Beowulf’s victory in the context of great victories of the past.   Beowulf is compared to the legendary Sigemund and, with his near perfect game, quarterback Drew Brees enters the pantheon of the greats.

But while they may exult, the winners must resist schadenfreude, which is to say, feasting on the tears of the losers.  I have written about this in a previous post, describing it as a very human response.  It is also the most transitory of delights and ultimately makes one feel small.  A real epic hero, if we are to judge from Beowulf, doesn’t indulge in schadenfreude.

Look at how he treats Unferth following his slaying of Grendel.  Before he faces the monsters, Beowulf gets a dismissive challenge from Unferth, who thinks he’s all hype.  Beowulf gives as good as he gets and ushers a Joe Namath “I guarantee a victory” boast:

He know he can trample down you Danes
to his heart’s content, humiliate and murder
without fear of reprisal.  But he will find me different.
I will show him how Geats shape to kill
in the heat of battle.  Then whoever wants to
may go bravely to mead, when the morning light
scarfed in sun-dazzle, shines forth from the south
and brings another daybreak to the world.

Beowulf’s victory shuts up Unferth’s trash talk:

There was less tampering and big talk then
from Unferth the boaster, less of his blather
as the hall-thanes eyed the awful proof
of the hero’s prowess, the splayed hand
up under the eaves.

Beowulf, however, is a gracious winner.  When Unferth’s sword comes up short against Grendel’s mother (he has, in an act of humility, lent it to Beowulf), Beowulf doesn’t point to its shortcomings—which is to say, he doesn’t rub either his victory over Grendel or over the mother in Unferth’s face:

Then that stalwart fighter ordered Hrunting
to be brought to Unferth, and bade Unferth
take the sword and thanked him for lending it.
He said he had found it a friend in battle
and a powerful help; he put no blame
on the blade’s cutting edge.  He was a considerate man.

So that’s how you should behave if your team has just won.  

But what does Beowulf tell us about handling a loss?

Well, first of all, it acknowledges the pain.  One expression of pain is Grendel’s cry after losing his arm.  There are professional athletes who talk about losing in comparable terms:

                Then an extraordinary
wail arose . . . ,
a God-cursed scream and strain of catastrophe,
the howl of the loser, the lament of the hell-serf
keening his wound.

Perhaps you’re feeling like wailing right now.  Or perhaps you are feeling like Hrothgar when he loses his best friend to a vengeful Grendel’s mother:

“Rest?  What is rest?  Sorrow has returned.
Alas for the Danes! Aeschere is dead.

Now, I’m not saying that seeing one’s team lose a football game is the same as having a friend die.  If one thinks it is, then one has lost all perspective.  But losing does involve witnessing the death of something precious.

Hrothgar wants to wallow in his grief, which is not healthy.  In fact, it unnerves Beowulf, who tells him to to be a man:

                                       Bear up
and be the man I expect you to be.

But sucking it up (or telling yourself to “get over it, it’s only a game”) is not enough.   Beowulf’s journey into the dark lake where the monster resides also gives us ways to handle sports upset.  (It also, much more importantly, provides guidance in how to handle truly significant grief, but I’m not writing about that today.)

Beowulf jumping into the lake is facing up to his feelings.   He doesn’t pretend he’s not torn to the core and he doesn’t claim that he should just gut out his emotional pain.  He’s hurting, which is captured in the underwater sea monsters stabbing at his heart.  But rather than fight them, first he lets them grab him and take him to their underwater hall.

But then, at the bottom of the lake (and of his depression), he grabs a giant sword that he finds there and slays Grendel’s mother.  Think of that sword as the realization that there is more important work to be done.  Perspective will be restored eventually.   

But it can’t be restored prematurely.  You have to take your dark journey through the lake first.  You have to see the failure of your will power (Beowulf’s grip fails him) and the failure of everyday coping mechanisms (the regular sword he is carrying).  You have to feel the full impact of the cold before you resurface.

In other words, go ahead and grieve for Peyton Manning and the Colts–you’ve invested a lot of yourself in them.  Your heart is involved.  If you didn’t care so much, it wouldn’t hurt so much.  Let it hurt. 

And then it will pass.  To use the images from the poem, the hard ice knife of grief will melt and the monsters will disappear from the lake:

Meanwhile, the sword
began to wilt into gory icicles
to slather and thaw.  It was a wonderful thing,
the way it all melted as ice melts
when the Father eases the fetters off the frost
and unravels the water-ropes.

Beowulf emerges from the dark lake to fight more battles.  So will the Colts, who could well be back at the Super Bowl next year.  So will you.

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Bread (Pretzels) and (Super Bowl) Circuses

By Robin Bates | Published: February 5, 2010

Pollice Verso ("Thumbs Down"), by Jean-Leon Gerome (1872)

Pollice Verso ("Thumbs Down"), by Jean-Leon Gerome (1872)

 

 

Bread and circuses.  That was the accusation of the Roman satirist Juvenal, directed against those politicians who used free bread and gladiatorial contests to divert the populace’s mind from their political responsibilities.

Today our diversions continue to occur in coliseums and arenas.  I plead guilty to having been so diverted.  These past couple of weeks, as I have gotten up in the morning, I have been listening to ESPN rather than National Public Radio.  Better to dream of Petyton Manning’s gorgeous passes than watch Haiti continuing to stagger under the aftermath of the earthquake, suicide bombers continuing to sow death, the Republicans continuing to take their marching orders from fanatical talk show hosts, and the Democrats continuing to lost their nerve.

Maybe this helps account for the fierce loyalty that certain fans have for their teams.  Disappointment with the world makes us feel as though circuses are our only hope.  Conflict in sports occurs within clear lines and victory is achievable.  We can imagine being receiver Reggie Wayne or running back Reggie Bush as we defy gravity and perform superhuman feats.  The world, by contrast, weighs upon us with all its intractability.

Here’s a poem that my father published in the New Yorker decades ago (in the early 1950’s) that draws a parallel between football and circuses.  “We who are about to die salute you” was the gladiator’s announcement to the emperor before going into battle.  My father imagines an Eastern European football player (that’s the significance of the name) announcing these words before the kickoff of a college homecoming game. 

Let the poem usher us into Super Bowl weekend.   But instead of seeing it as bread and circuses, an irresponsible escape from life, let us regard it as a momentary diversion that will restore our energies.  After it is over, we can then, once again, take up the challenges of a world that that needs our participation. 

Homecoming Game, by Scott Bates

Moreturi te salutamus! cries
Malikovich. The grandstands rise
Deafening November with their answering roar.

Apollo soars. The drums go out
Dropping a heavy silence. Then, with a shout,
The referees let the lions out.

World, we’ll be showing up for work on Monday.  We who are about to die will be saluting you.

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Quarterback Poems for Inspiration

By Robin Bates | Published: February 4, 2010

manning2

When I was a child, my father used to read us poems from a wonderful poetry anthology called Some Haystacks Don’t Even Have Any Needle, edited by Stephen Dunning.  Two of the poems were about quarterbacks, which seems appropriate for this Super Bowl week given that the top two quarterbacks in football will be playing.  I therefore contacted my father and he sent them to me.

“The Passer,” by George Abbe, is a hymn to the beauty of the forward pass.  I love the image of the quarterback seeing his targets emerge “like quail above a wheat field’s golden lake,” which can invoke Indiana’s open fields.  The poem also captures the poise of Peyton Manning and Drew Brees and the breathtaking accuracy of their throws.  The receiver most like a smooth plane has got to be Reggie Wayne.  Here’s the poem:

“The Passer,” by George Abbe

Dropping back with the ball ripe in my palm
grained and firm as the flesh of a living charm,
I taper and coil myself down, raise arm to fake,
running a little, seeing my targets emerge
like quail above a wheat field’s golden lake. 

And as I run and weigh, measure and test,
the light kindles on helmets, the angry leap;
but secretly, coolly, as though stretching a hand to his chest,
I lay the ball in the arms of my planing end,
as true as metal, as deftly as surgeon’s wrist.

The other poem, Dabney Stuart’s “Ties,” has its own mystical feel as it captures the memories of high school football.  The poem seems to be about a mother and father listening to their son play football on the radio.  But I think it is really about the son thinking back to his high school days, which now seem infused with magic.  Time has stripped away the details—there is a lot of fading in this poem—and his parents are kind of there, kind of not.  But that just means that the pass itself, the memory, stands out all the more, suspended in the brilliant air forever.  A tie to the past.   Here it is:

“Ties,” by Dabney Stuart

When I faded back to pass
Late in the game, as one
Who has been away some time
Fades back into memory,
My father, who had been nodding
At home by the radio,
Would wake, asking
My mother, who had not
Been listening, “What’s the score?”
And she would answer, “Tied”,
While the pass I threw
Hung high in the brilliant air
Beneath the dark, like a star.

This poem brings back a vivid memory of my own, although this one involves baseball and my oldest son.  I remember Justin hitting a game-tying double in the final inning of a game at the junior level (13-year-olds) and of the ball inscribing a parabola through the night air.  Justin died ten years ago in a drowning accident, but I still see that ball hanging in the lights.  Like a star.

 Note: In the version of George Abbe’s poem that appears in Some Haystacks Don’t Even Have Any Needles, the editor has cut the middle section of the poem (presumably with the permission of the author).  I actually think this improves the poem, but if you want to see it in its entirety you can go here. 

Posted in 20th Century, Sports, poetry | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Beowulf and Rifts within the NFL

By Robin Bates | Published: February 3, 2010
Roger Goodell, a Beowulf or a Hrothgar?Roger Goodell, a Beowulf or a Hrothgar?    

While football joy currently reigns supreme in Miami, dark clouds loom on the horizon (to use a hackneyed metaphor).  Even as more people than ever are watching football, the owners are unhappy with the current players’ contract and want them to take an 18 percent salary cut, along with shouldering some of the owners’ financial risk.

The players, however, like the current contract, point to the considerable physical risks that they take to play the game (along with their short career expectancy), and want to stay pat.  There is a good chance the owners will lockout the players for the 2011 season.  Negotiations on next year’s contract have been stalled for months.

What would Beowulf do?

The 8th century Anglo-Saxon epic actually touches on some of the issues in the case.  Beowulf opens with Denmark experiencing a period of unprecedented prosperity and apparent social stability.  King Hrothgar, the fourth in a line of successful kings, has taken the wealth that is flooding into his kingdom and constructed a magnificent new hall (Cowboys Stadium?).  Yet the prosperity that should be a blessing attracts a monstrous malcontent.  Next thing we know, Grendel is wreaking havoc and we have “woe that never stopped, steady affliction.”

Grendel is the spirit of murderous jealousy, and he comes from within the society, not without.  He is our own darker self, which is why he’s able to strike at the very heart of the kingdom.  Like the National Football League, which has no rivals in American sports, King Hrothgar has nothing to fear from external threats.  It is his own relatives and warriors he must worry about.

In the current football unrest, there seem to be two divisions—that between the players and the owners and that between the wealthy and the not so wealthy owners.  One thing that has made football so successful is parity, which has created a fairly level playing field, both in money and in talent.  Virtually every team, except for those that are very badly run, has a chance of doing well in any given year, which is not the case with baseball.

The wealthy teams, however, chafe against the revenue sharing schemes of the League.  If Dan Snyder of the Washington Redskins or Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys had their way, they would use their superior resources to buy championship teams, somewhat like what the New York Yankees do in baseball.  Out of these imbalances arise jealousies, and those jealousies are well on their way to creating a season without football.

There are other rifts in Beowulf that also touch upon the problems within the NFL.  A good king is one who takes the revenue generated by his warriors and returns it to them.  This is the social contract of 8th century Anglo-Saxon society: they are loyal to him, he is generous to them.  That contract is broken when the king becomes miserly.  There are a number of warnings throughout the poem about kings who behave this way, especially King Heremod:

His rise in the world brought little joy
to the Danish people, only death and destruction.
He vented his rage on men he caroused with,
killed his own comrades, a pariah king
who cut himself off from his own kind
even though Almighty God had made him
eminent and powerful and marked him from the start
for a happy life.  But a change happened,
he grew bloodthirsty, gave no more rings
to honor the Danes.  He suffered in the end
for having plagued his people for so long:
His life lost happiness.

The monster version of greed is the dragon.  Dragons refuse to share their treasure, even though they have more than enough, and they lash out against those who attempt to take even a single cup from them. They are scaly hard and poison runs in their veins.  Even more than Grendel, they have the power to bring the entire society (or organization) to its knees.

Living in the Washington, D. C. area as I do, I hear a lot about the dragon who owns the Redskins.

Does the poem offer any solutions?  Well, Beowulf is able to defeat Grendel (internal jealousy) by being firm and exerting a strong grip on things (literally).  Jealousy disintegrates in his presence and order is restored.  Could NFL commissioner Roger Goodell be a Beowulf? 

Unfortunately, Goodell, like King Hrothgar, comes from within the system and so is compromised.  Beowulf has the advantage of being an outsider, but it’s hard to imagine a contemporary outsider (the president? Congress?) stepping into the NFL battles and sorting them out.   By the time the fighting is done, there’ is a real possibility that Hrothgar will be left sitting disconsolate on his throne, his television screen dark.

If jealousy can’t be defeated, what about greed?  The key to defeating the dragon is collaboration.  In his old age, Beowulf has become a bit of a dragon, bitter and self-absorbed.  His battle with the dragon is, in some ways, a battle with dark tendencies within himself.   Just when he’s about to succumb to his scaly side, however, his nephew Wiglaf comes to his aid and helps him slay the dragon.  Think of Beowulf and Wiglaf as owners and players, working together to free the treasure that the greedy dragon spirit is trying to monopolize. 

When they do, they get to admire a (Super Bowl?) banner hanging from the rafters.  Here is Wiglaf entering the dragon’s treasure hoard following the battle:

And he saw too a standard, entirely of gold,
hanging high over the hoard,
a masterpiece of filigree; it glowed with light
so he could make out the ground at his feet
and inspect the valuables.

The dream here is that leaders and followers, working together, will make sure that the wealth circulates, benefitting everyone.  I know that America seems to be in a selfish phase at the moment (it is not only NFL owners that are dragons), but can owners accept the  input from players and can players skirt the dragon fire and come to the assistance of owners?  Can all rise above their egos and their narrow interests for the common good?  The situation calls for heroic action.

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Coach James Caldwell, English Major

By Robin Bates | Published: February 2, 2010
Colts Coach James CaldwellColts Coach James Caldwell             

It appears that football will continue to occupy this website until the actual playing of the Super Bowl ends our annual week of collective hysteria and allows us to move on to other subjects.  (Of course, as a Colts fan I am more hysterical this year than others.) Today I’m going to take up the subject of Coach Jim Caldwell, rookie coach of the Colts, who was an English literature major at the University of Iowa as an undergraduate. 

This fact fascinates me and got me to thinking about what role, if any, literature has played in his career.  Does he draw on certain works as he faces the unimaginable pressures of being a coach at the professional level?

If I could ask Coach Caldwell questions, I would want to know (1) what are his favorite literary works and why and (2) has he found himself turning to any literary works this past year.

A Sports Illustrated article gave me one poem that apparently has come in handy at tough times: William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus.” Caldwell quoted the following lines to the reporter during the interview:

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

The few articles I have read about the man succeeding the legendary Tony Dungy portray him as thoughtful and substantive.  For instance, here he is talking about how one must play to one’s strengths and not change just because of one’s opponent.  He sees the issue as one of authenticity, a favorite word of the Existentialists.  (Writers like Sartre and Camus were popular in the 1970’s when Caldwell was in college.):

The great thing about this game is that it requires an immense amount of authenticity. So, you have to be who you are. These seasons are too long to pretend. The emotion involved in this game will strip away all that veneer and you are who you are. That’s who we are. That’s how we’ve always handled things. Maybe someone chooses to do things differently, but that’s because it serves them, and that’s what they feel comfortable with. In our particular case, our guys focus in on what we have to get done, and really what we try to get done is get ourselves in the best position to function great within those white lines.

Caldwell is noted for his ability to shut out all external narratives and to focus (and help his players focus) on “what we have to get done.” He contrasts his job with that of journalists, who prefer drama. Here is a quotation from one of his press conferences where he addresses the different perspectives:

You guys have to look at things and try to expound upon situations and try to make them a bit grand in terms of how you describe the things. For us, for me, we try to narrow this thing down as small as we possibly can and really look at the things that matter. All of the other stuff doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how I reflect on my past and my 30-some years of coaching before. That doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do right now in preparation for winning this game. So we narrow it down as tight as we possibly can, and I try not to deviate from that.

Other than being conscious of the two different options, Caldwell may not sound particularly poetic here.  But to effectively communicate the focus to his team, he turns to figurative speech—which is to say, metaphors, images, and analogies.

For instance, during the season he needed an image that would speak to the Colts’ defense, which is the smallest (also the fastest) in all of football.  Because of their size, they sustain frequent injuries and were the second most banged-up team in the League this year.  The other teams have long had the perception that the Colts’ defense can be pushed around.  To counter that, Caldwell came up with an analogy that has caught his Defense’s imagination: they are to think of themselves as “the hunters, not the hunted.” It has been inspiring to see the Colts’ defense  embrace the image and, better yet, embody it.  No team swarms to the ball the way they do, and they have managed to stop the most potent running games in the League.  Caldwell says that the image of hunters was

utilized to do exactly what it did, and that is provoke some thought in their mind, which they can relate to.  I think you can use a number of different analogies, and it doesn’t necessarily have to coincide with my thinking. It’s just how they get it that counts. I do think overall when you watch them play, they do get it, they do understand it. A lot of them will relate it to the lion and the gazelle or whatever it might be, whatever strikes their interest and gets them to kind of focus in on what we’re trying to get accomplished. The real thing is that, oftentimes people will red-letter our game, for example, ‘We have to knock these guys off, they’ve had a lot of success. Peyton Manning’s a great player, let’s target him.’ Whatever it might be. They want you to feel as if you’re being hunted, but we want the opposite to be true. There are things that we focus in on, that we have to gain from a win, as well. I think our guys certainly get it.

There’s another way that Caldwell uses language that could also be called poetic, described by ESPN correspondent Paul Kuharsky.  Apparently, during the week before a game, Caldwell will come up with three words that the players are to carry with them into the contest.  The words, which must be well chosen, seem to carry talismanic power, and the players are careful not to reveal them to outsiders.  Guard Ryan Lilja talks about them as follows:

I think it’s a very effective way to get his point across and you’re not working with Mensa members in here most of the time. Keep it simple stupid, know what I mean? You jot those things down, you hang on to them all week.

Before the game you don’t want to read six paragraphs of notes from every meetings. You want to say, ‘You know what, let’s play with passion and pride and confidence this week’ or whatever it may be.

Poetry is language used with power, and that’s how the words operate here.  And despite Lilja’s self-deprecating comments, football players are not stupid.  They in fact have to be smarter than many athletes as they are responsible for a wide and bewildering range of schemes and situational decisions. Language well used is not so much keeping things simple as it is compacting much into little.

Learning these things about Caldwell has given me more insight into his decision not to go for the perfect undefeated season in the next-to-the-last game.  General manager Bill Polian took much of the heat for sitting starters, as though a rookie head coach couldn’t be expected to make such a controversial move on his own.  But while it is true that both Polian and team owner Jim Irsay were consulted and both approved, the decision was consistent with the kind of man Caldwell is.  He focuses on the task at hand rather than go for the melodramatic gesture.  There is a kind of dignity, a kind of poetry, in that.

To make a case for my point, I invoke one of my favorite short stories, “Death and the Compass” by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.  At the beginning of the story, the Sherlock Holmes-like detective Lonnrot is investigating a murder.  The Lestrade-like police commissioner is also there and comes up with a common sense explanation.  He believes that the murderer, planning to steal some diamonds, blundered into the wrong hotel room.  Finding a rabbi there working on the Kabbalah, he killed him to shut him up.

Lonnrot, however, says that, while the explanation is indeed plausible, it is not very interesting and he is only drawn to interesting theories.  As he puts it,

You will reply that reality hasn’t the slightest need to be of interest.  And I’ll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not.  In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely.  Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber.

Lonnrot then proceeds to enter into the mysteries of the Kaballah.

As it turns out, the police commissioner is right, Lonnrot is wrong, and the gangster who ordered the theft uses Lonnrot’s preference for fascinating theories against him.  He drops suggestive hints that form a Kabbalistic pattern, which Lonnrot follows into a trap.  Right before he is to be killed by the gangster, Lonnrot talks about the most complicated labyrinth of them all: the line from a to b:

I know of a Greek labyrinth which is a single straight line.  Along this line so many philosophers have lost themselves that a mere detective might well do so too.

While most of the football world and much of the Colts fan base were outraged by the team’s decision not to attempt a perfect season, Caldwell negotiated that simple labyrinth from a to b, from the regular season to the Super Bowl, with dignity and conviction.  It is not that he was without imagination, a dull ant compelled to go in a single direction.  He was not unaware of the significance of a perfect season.  Rather, he preferred a simple and elegant straight line to grandiloquent narratives.

In my view, his decision has already been validated.  A win on Sunday, however, would put an exclamation point to it.

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Colts Football Doggerel Annotated

By Robin Bates | Published: February 1, 2010

Pierre Garcon after the Colts' conference title winPierre Garcon after the Colts’ conference title win    

I promised an annotation for my weekend piece of doggerel in praise of the Indianapolis Colts so here it is.   And while I’m focusing on such poetry, let me mention a similar endeavor that my cousin Dan Bates undertook in praise of the Boston Red Sox of 2004, the year they miraculously overcame a three game, one-run-down-in-the-ninth deficit to the New York Yankees to come back and defeat their hated rivals.  A website to the poem can be found at www.beantownballad.com/  Although Dan is my favorite cousin, I have to make allowances for him since, living in Maine, he’s a Patriots fan and thus a Colts hater.

Ballad of the 2009 Colts

At the start of the season
Experts saw little reason
To believe that “the Horse”
Would compete as a force.

But the Colts remained calm
And their words were like balm:
“Lose our Coach Dungy? [1]
We’ll rebound like a bungee;
No Marvin Harrison? [2]
We’ll refortify the garrison
With a man from Cedille [3]
Always good for a thrill
And a Mormon from Oakley [4]
Who reminds us of Stokley; [5]
There’s a way if there’s will,
And besides we’ve got Bill [6]
Who a dynasty crafted
With players undrafted,
Like small Gary Brackett [7]
Who they thought couldn’t hack it;
And of course there’s “the One” [8]
With an arm like a gun—
When it comes to our Peyton,
You don’t wanta be hatin’;
And lighting-like Freeney, [9]
That pass-rushing meanie,
And Dallas and Reggie, [10]
Who make corners edgy,
So we should be okay—
Now let’s go out and play.”

 The year began tight
Against Jacksonville’s might,
Then a few easy wins,
Then the drama begins:
Down in the fourth
Was a matter of course; [11]
They fought back so often,
Saw other teams soften,
That some accused Peyton
Of dealing with Satan.

And then came Tom Brady [12]
Who drives the Colts crazy
And dark genius Belichick
Who proves a pain in the neck:
“4th down and 2— [13]
What should I do
With Manning there waitin’?
Okay, no hesitatin’,
Let’s go for the win…
How’d that safety come in?!”

And now the December
We’ll always remember:
A team that’s depleted
But still undefeated;
Does it go for perfection
Or another direction? [14]

“History you be spolian’–
Curse you, Bill Polian!”

Momentum, Bill stated,
Is far overrated.
If you want players’ best,
First give them a rest.

Long-suffering Baltimore,
Home of the Colts heretofore,
Tested the theory—
And the Ravens were weary;
Rice was pureed
By the D’s blinding speed. [15]

Then came Rex Ryan [16]
Either boastin’ or cryin’;
“We can’t outtalk him,”
Said quiet coach Jim, [17]
“But just let him blitz—
We will give the man fits.”

And now in march the Saints,
No longer the aint’s,
Blown by a Brees [18]
That topples tall trees.
When he throws a lob,
It’s a heckuva job. [19]

So who are you for
As these teams go to war?
America’s team,
A drowned city’s dream?
Or Peyton the brain [20]
Who sees all things plain?
If he stomps on their throat
He might prove himself GOAT. [21] 

Both ways we win—
Let the contest begin.

 

[1] Legendary coach Tony Dungy retired last year;  [2] as did legendary Colts receiver Marvin Harrison; [3] second-year receiver Pierre Garcon, of Haitian ancestry, is the only player in the National Football League that has a cedille (punctuation mark denoting a soft “c”) on his jersey; [4] rookie Austin Collie, a Mormon player, like Garcon had a spectacular year.  Collie attended Oak Ridge High School outside of Sacramento; [5] Brandon Stokley was a much beloved, and very effective, Colts receiver who now plays for the Denver Broncos; [6] General Manager Bill Polian is one of the best minds in football and has the ability to find great players that no one else wants; [7] one of these is the 5’11” 235-pound Gary Brackett, who was one of the best linebackers in football this year; [8] “the one” is Peyton Manning, a player well on his way to owning every significant quarterback record; [9] Dwight Freeney is the undersized but powerful defensive end who terrorizes quarterbacks; [10] tight end Dallas Clark and wide receiver Reggie Wayne are two of Manning’s favorite targets; [11] the Colts set a record this year for fourth quarter comebacks (7).

[12] For years Tom Brady and Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots had the Colts’ number; [13] this year, in a controversial decision stemming from a lack of faith in his defense to stop Manning, Belichick opted to go for a fourth and two from his own 28 yard-line with his team leading by five (instead of punting the ball away).  Safety Melvin Bullitt stopped the pass receiver from making the first down and Manning, given excellent field position, scored right before the game ended to complete a monumental comeback for the Colts.

[14] The Colts created a firestorm by sitting their starters in the third quarter in a game against the New York Jets in which they had the lead. (They had already assured themselves of the best season in football and of home field advantage throughout the playoffs and didn’t need the win.)  The Jets came back to win, thereby ending Indianapolis’s bid for a perfect regular season and potentially (if they had gone on to win the Super Bowl) a perfect 19-0 final record.  Many fans and football experts were outraged although others argued that the Colts were right to focus on resting their players rather than going all out.

[15] The Colts speedy defense stymied the powerful running game of Baltimore Raven running back Ray Rice.  Some thought that the victory vindicated the Colts’ decision to rest players.

[16] Rex Ryan, coach of the New York Jets, is famous for wearing his heart on the sleeve.  He once cried before his team following a tough loss.  Prior to the playoffs, he said he would be “shocked” if the Jets did not win a Super Bowl, and the schedule of dates he handed to his players included the day of the Super Bowl victory parade; [17] Colts coach Jim Caldwell, the polar opposite of Ryan, told his team that they might be outtalked but they wouldn’t be outplayed.  The Jets’ blitz was effective early in the game, but then Manning figured it out and proceeded to have the best day any quarterback that year had had against the league’s top-rated defense.

[18] Drew Brees, the great quarterback for the New Orleans Saints (who used to be so inept that their fans called them the “aints”) is noted for the precision of his passes; [19] the heckuva job that he does throwing passes is in contrast to “Heckuva Job Brownie,” President George’s Bush’s director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (the phrase was the president’s) who proved inept following the Hurricane Katrina flooding of New Orleans.

[20] Peyton Manning is the most cerebral of all quarterbacks and is famous for his endless studying of game tapes and his ability to figure out defenses and adjust; [21] GOAT stands for Greatest of All Time.  If Manning wins this Super Bowl, many think that he will enter the conversation for that designation.

Posted in 21st Century, Doggerel, Sports | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Football Doggerel in Praise of the Colts

By Robin Bates | Published: January 30, 2010

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There’s no limit to the number of purposes to which poetry can be put, including a celebration of one’s favorite team.  Here’s a piece of doggerel–which is to say, light comic verse–that I’ve written in honor of the Indianapolis Colts, who will be playing in the up-coming Super Bowl.   I’ll annotate any obscure references in Monday’s post.  

Ballad of the 2009 Colts

At the start of the season
Experts saw little reason
To believe that “the Horse”
Would compete as a force.

But the Colts remained calm
And their words were like balm:
“Lose our Coach Dungy?
We’ll rebound like a bungee;
No Marvin Harrison?
We’ll refortify the garrison
With a man from Cedille
Always good for a thrill
And a Mormon from Oakley
Who reminds us of Stokley;
There’s a way if there’s will,
And besides we’ve got Bill
Who a dynasty crafted
With players undrafted,
Like small Gary Brackett
Who they thought couldn’t hack it.
And of course there’s “the One”
With an arm like a gun—
When it comes to our Peyton,
You don’t wanta be hatin’;
And lighting-like Freeney,
That pass-rushing meanie,
And Dallas and Reggie,
Who make corners edgy,
So we should be okay—
Now let’s go out and play.”

The year began tight
Against Jacksonville’s might,
Then a few easy wins,
Then the drama begins:
Down in the fourth
Was a matter of course;
They fought back so often,
Saw other teams soften,
That some accused Peyton
Of dealing with Satan.

And then came Tom Brady
Who drives the Colts crazy
And dark genius Belichick
Always a pain in the neck:
“4th down and 2—
What should I do
With Manning there waitin’?
Okay, no hesitatin’,
Let’s go for the win…
How’d that safety come in?!”

And now the December
We’ll always remember:
A team that’s depleted
But still undefeated;
Does it go for perfection
Or another direction?

“History you be spolian’–
Curse you, Bill Polian!”

Momentum, Bill stated,
Is far overrated.
If you want players’ best,
First give them a rest.

Long-suffering Baltimore,
Home of the Colts heretofore,
Tested the theory—
And the Ravens were weary;
Rice was pureed
By the D’s blinding speed.

Then came Rex Ryan
Either boastin’ or cryin’;
“We can’t outtalk him,”
Said quiet coach Jim.
“But just let him blitz—
We will give the man fits.”

Now in march the Saints,
No longer the aint’s,
Blown by a Brees
That topples tall trees.
When he throws a lob,
It’s a heckuva job.

So who are you for
As these clubs go to war?
America’s team,
A drowned city’s dream?
Or Peyton the brain
Who sees all things plain?
If he stomps on their throat
He just might be the GOAT. 

Both ways we win—
Let the contest begin.

Posted in 21st Century, Doggerel, Sports | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Salinger and the Teenage Mindset

By Robin Bates | Published: January 29, 2010

J. D. SalingerJ. D. Salinger   

In my Introduction to Literature classes, I used to poll my students about the books they had read in high school that had impacted them.   One book above all made it to the top of list after list: J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.  I mention this because Salinger died yesterday at age 91.   

Catcher in the Rye was an important book for me but not because it was one of my favorites.  In fact, I hated it when I encountered it in a sophomore high school English class.   I have discovered, however, that there is as much to be learned from a book that one hates as from a book that one loves.  Here is a slightly adapted post of mine about it,  from September 10, 2009:

I was assigned Catcher in the Rye by Bill Goldfinch, my sophomore English teacher at the Sewanee Military Academy.  Many of the other students, far less interested in literature than I was, loved it.   But I felt sullied by it.

While I detested it, however, I still vividly remember certain scenes.  I remember Holden Caulfield’s acne-pocked roommate (or maybe it’s a student down the hall).  I remember fellow students acting up in a student assembly.  I remember his history teacher picking his nose while pretending not to.  I remember Holden wearing a hunter’s cap and calling everyone a phony. 

Above all I remember his trip to New York, which terrified me.  I felt as though he was entering a war zone.  I found particularly unpleasant the run-in he has with a prostitute and her pimp.

Upon reflection, I realize that what I disliked about Holden is what I disliked about myself as an adolescent.  Holden is self-conscious and feels like an outsider.  He is judgmental towards others but at the same time he wants to belong.  He is simultaneously critical and envious of jocks. He doesn’t like himself.  Nothing ever feels stable.

There were other similarities with my situation.  Holden goes to a college prep boarding school, as did I.  Unlike Holden, however, I was a day student, and I felt as though I wasn’t as mature as the boarders.  After all, I was still living with my family.  I therefore felt threatened by Holden going to New York.  It felt like the stories I would hear from my fellow students about going to parties in Nashville or Chattanooga or visiting the Playboy club.  I felt like an innocent. 

I think I found the scene with the pimp and the prostitute distressing because of all my ambivalence about sex.  It captured the way sex seemed alluring and forbidden and dirty all at once.   Salinger contributes to the effect by setting the scene in a city hotel room, a threatening environment for a reader from small town Tennessee.

In short, the book reminded me of my inadequacies.  Other students may have loved it because it gave them a voice to their frustrations.  But I wanted to escape this world, blamed Catcher in the Rye for shoving my reality in my face, and escaped into fantasy literature, above all Lord of the Rings.

As I think about it, Tolkien’s book is in many ways a reaction against the loss of innocence.  At the end, the age of magic comes to a close as the elves leave Middle-earth. Humans have to step up and begin governing.

Interestingly enough, I wasn’t really misreading Catcher in the Rye.  My trauma is Holden’s trauma as well.  After all, he longs for the innocence of his little sister, which gives the book its title:

 ”Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

Holden may think he’s talking about Phoebe, but he’s also talking about himself.  He feels that he too is a kid who is running off the cliff and he wants someone to catch him as well.  He thinks he’s all alone, living without a net.  So do most adolescents.  So did I.

Addendum:  My son Toby, who worked for a Baltimore tutoring center for a year, says that Catcher in the Rye remains a polarizing work among high schoolers.  He says he could always predict which students would love it (the theater-loving, angsty, self-searching, creative students) and which would hate it (the athletes, the “populars”).  I saw some of that same dynamic with my college students.  

And here are a couple of pieces of trivia.  According to NPR last night, 60 million copies of Catcher in the Rye have been sold.  And my English department chair when I was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia (Meta Grosman) made Catcher in the Rye required reading for all senior high school English classes in the country.

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The Birds of War-Torn Afghanistan

By Robin Bates | Published: January 28, 2010

Steppe EagleSteppe Eagle      

I share today a poem by my father Scott Bates, who is an ardent birdwatcher as well as poet.  The poem reminds us of an ongoing war that too often we want to push out of our minds.

Through contrasting the natural world with the disasters created by humans, my father expresses his longing for an unspoiled world of great natural beauty.  Yet the two worlds are not entirely separate.  The Steppe Eagle may be able to ignore the puffs of explosives below him (he’s much more interested in a herd of ibex), but sandgrouse glean in the minefields, russet sparrows move into the emptied houses, and crows and vultures feed on the human dead.  The tragedy of the war is captured in images that are all the more powerful for being only indirectly referred to.

The poem brings to my mind a powerful scene in Three Kings, the 1999 David O. Russell/George Clooney movie about the first Persian Gulf War.  A woman war reporter, tough as nails (she has to be), breaks down when she encounters a pelican trapped in the oil spills caused by Saddam Hussein blowing up the Kuwaiti oil stations.  Seemingly inured to human suffering, she can’t take the sight of innocence desecrated.  It is the death of her own innocence that she mourns.

A couple of notes on the poem.  The “great game” in the first line echoes the phrase, made famous by Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, referring to the battle between east and west.  (Here the great game seems also to be the conflict between humans and nature.)  The gyrfalcon freed from the faloncer, meanwhile, is an allusion to Yeats’ great poem “The Second Coming,” which predicts cataclysmic apocalypse “stalking towards Bethlehem to be born.”  As Yeats writes, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.”  In my father’s elegiac vision, the riches of the orient seem to be a thing of the past.  Here’s the poem:

The Birds of Afghanistan

“Hardly anyone has been birding in war-torn Afghanistan for 20 years. . . . Around 460 species of birds have been recorded there, a good record for a land-locked and largely arid country.”  Nigel Wheatley, Where to Watch Birds in Asia, 1996

The Great Game of Winter plays in the Hindu Kush

A black-eyed, swarthy-faced, hawk-billed Steppe
Eagle sits on a cliff at fourteen thousand feet
Like Hasan Ben Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain.
He ignores the puffs of smoke in the hills below
And watches a herd of Ibex forage
In the drifts of whirling snow.

Bands of Snowfinches feed on juniper berries.
Siberian Cranes wing southwest over Mount Zebak.
Snowcocks call in the high meadows of Badakshan.
Millions of Teal and Pelicans swim and dive in Hamun-i-Puzak.
(Flowerpeckers, Sunbirds, and Spiderhunters
Have left on vacation for the Indonesian jungles.)
Flocks of Painted Sandgrouse glean with impunity
In the minefields.  Russet Sparrows in the east
Move into empty villages.  Ravens chat on broken towers.
Carrion Crows and Bearded Vultures enjoy a holiday feast.

 A Gyrfalcon soars
Freed from her hood and her falconer.

The Steppe Eagle swings down the Khinjan pass,
Circling down where once Marco Polo went
Amidst the riches of the Orient.

Added note: My father just elucidated for me another allusion in the poem: the “old man of the mountain” was a ruler of an Islamic sect in the 11th century who would get his followers high on hashish and send them out to assassinate his enemies (the word “assassin” comes from hashish).  I supposed this makes Osama Bin Laden the current old man of the mountain, with opium being the drug that fuels his operation.

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Mess with Dionysus and You’ll Pay

By Robin Bates | Published: January 27, 2010
Titian, Dionysus and AriadneTitian, “Dionysus and Ariadne”       

Euripides’ The Bacchae was written 2500 years ago.  Given the shape our environment is in, the play is more urgent than ever.

The story involves the nature god Dionysus, who visits Thebes followed by a troupe of dancing women, the Maenads or Bacchae.  Dionysus is the product of a union between Zeus and Semele, a Theban woman who, promised anything she wants by the king of the gods, asks to see him in all his glory (the idea has been planted in her mind by Zeus’s jealous wife Hera).  Zeus must oblige, Semele is blasted, and Zeus, catching the fetus of Dionysus, sews him into his thigh, and brings him to gestation.

In the play, Semele has been stigmatized by her sisters, who see her explanation (“I was knocked up by Zeus.  Honest!”) as an evasion.  To punish them for dishonoring his mother, Dionysus has rendered them mad, sending them cavorting into the woods like his followers.  He is also directing all Thebes to worship him, through dance and revelry, and two men respond: the blind seer Teiresias and the now-retired ex-king Cadmus, Semele’s father.

 But Pentheus, the current king, will have none of it.  One can sympathize.  He has come back from a trip to find his mother and aunts dancing in the mountains and his grandfather and the city’s seer on the way there.  The chief executive office, responsible for general order, feels that all hell is breaking loose.

He squares off with Dionysus, who has taken the shape of a beautiful young man, and of course loses.  Dionysus first seduces him into dressing up as a woman to go spy on the women and then gets them to think that Pentheus is a lion.  With superhuman strength, the women uproot the tree in which Pentheus is perched and his mother rips off his head.  When regular sight returns, Agave is left with the realization of what she has done.  When she and Cadmus protest to Dionysus that their punishment has been too severe, he is implacable: “I am a god, and you committed an outrage against me.”

The punishments do seem out of proportion to the crime, but perhaps less so if one sees Dionysus as simply representing a set of consequences—namely, if you mess with nature, nature will get you back.  Build your house in a flood plane, pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere, drain the aquifers to water your golf courses, and nature will prove implacable.

On the other hand, honor nature and nature will share its bounties.  The Bacchae has enchanting images of nature.  Here are the women of Thebes interacting with nature, described by a cowherd who comes across them:

First they let their hair down to their shoulders,
and those who had loosened their fawnskins garments
hitched them up and belted the spotted skins
with snakes that licked their cheeks.
Some of them cradled young gazelles or wolf cubs,
and gave white milk for them to suck.
These were ones who had just given birth,
and their breasts were swollen, their babies left behind.
All crowned themselves with ivy, oak and flowering
vines.  One took her thyrsus, struck a rock,
and water leapt out, pure as dew.
Another set her staff in solid ground
and the god sent her a fountain of wine.
If anyone was thirsty for a drink of milk
she scrabbled her sharp fingers in the earth
and it came, spurting white. Sweet streams of honey
too came dripping from the ivy-covered wands.

Our relationship with our own nature is also a theme of the play.   When Semele’s sisters function as society’s morality police, condemning her for her sexual indiscretion, Nature will have none of it.  Dionysus decrees that the rigid moralists will go off the deep end.    It reminds me of those politicians (Governor Mark Sandford of South Carolina, for instance) who self-righteously preach “family values” platforms and then are caught messing around.  And of the fact that some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in our country occur in school districts with just-say-no abstinence-only sexual education programs.

What I find interesting about such people is that, rather than acknowledging a need to question, they just become more strident, as though the force of their assertions will override any arguments and any doubts.  Imagine, in the following passage, that Pentheus is blaming the media or rock music or social permissiveness or some such for, say, the outbreak of sexuality in his kingdom—as though the sexual drive is not already a powerful urge already within us:

        Track down that foreigner
The one who looks like a girl.  He carried this new disease
tour women, put this filth in our bedrooms.
If you catch him, bring him here in chains
so he can pay the penalty—death by stoning—and learn
what a serious crime it is to play Bacchus in Thebes.

From Teiresias’s balanced perspective, this is crazy talk.  And yet we hear comparable political prouncements like this on a fairly regular basis in our on society.  Here’s what Teiresias says:

Abomination! You haven’t the faintest idea what you are saying!
You’ve become a complete lunatic; this is no temporary madness.

I sometimes feel that lunacy is on the loose in some of the national conversations regarding nature, especially from those who deny global warming.  The problem is, if Pentheus remains intransigeant, Nature will ultimately tear us all apart. 

Posted in 5th Century BC, Drama, Nature | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment