The Heat-Pacers NBA series is like Sam Gamgee fighting Shelob in “Lord of the Rings.”
With a lackluster NBA playoffs, I find myself thrown back on my memories. A Fairchild poem understands how I feel.
Kevin Durant is like Akhilleus. In more ways than one.
Posted in Homer | Also tagged Homer, Iliad, Kevin Durant, NBA |
The horror of witnessing Kevin Ware’s horrific basketball injury reminds me of a moment of comparable horror in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.”
The thuggish way that the Chicago Bulls ended the Miami Heat’s streak recall Oliver Wendell Holmes’s “harpies of the shore.”
Michael Harper’s “Makin’ Jump Shots” has echoes of escape from slavery.
A Garrett Hongo poem about the 1980′s Lakers allows us to temporarily forget our disappointment with this year’s team.
Edward Hirsch’s “Fast Break” captures the seamless beauty of a perfect fast break.
Lebron James is to opponents as the gods are to King Lear.
LeBron James may love “The Hunger Games” because he sees in it his own struggles with the NBA.
Through his nickname, Lebron James invites associations with the King James Version of the Bible.
Rajon Rondo’s remarkable but ultimately wasted performance against the Miami Heat is like William Wallace’s glorious defeat in “The Scottish Chiefs.”
Sherman Alexie wonders what will go through Kobe Bryant’s mind when he finds himself dominated by a younger player. This past week, we saw it happen.
In this Scott Bates poem, the poetry of basketball is surpassed by the poetry of frisbee throwing.
See explosive Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin appear from nowhere brings to mind the Keats poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.”
Lebron James is not the king but the sidekick, not Michael Jordan but Scottie Pippen. In literary terms, he is not King Odysseus but Prince Telemachus. His teammate Dwyane Wade is the king of the franchise.
I designate the Miami Heat as the Greeks in Homer’s Iliad. After all, they represent a kind of dream team, kings from different city states coming together to seek glory. The Bulls are like the Trojans in that they have only one top-tier fighter. Derrick Bell is their Hector.
Posted in Homer | Also tagged Homer, Iliad, Sports |
What’s in a name? Would Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose by any other name smell as sweet?
By capturing a player as unpredictable as Michael Jordan within a verse form as rigidly formatted as a sestina, poet Jay Spoon makes it appear that “his airness” operated to the dictates of a higher law. Within the rigid confines of the boundaries of the court and working to deposit a round rubber ball within a small metal rim 12 feet above the floor, Jordan made magic happen.
“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” Eliot’s well-known conclusion to “The Hollow Men” (read the poem here) came to mind after watching the Butler Bulldogs lose to the Connecticut Huskies 53-41.The game was so bad that it takes a masterpiece of modernist despair to do it justice.
Sports Saturday Even though it happened a week ago, I am still shaking my head at one of the most bizarre endings I have ever witnessed to a sports event. The University of Pittsburgh, ranked one in its region, and Butler University, last year’s tournament darling and eventual runner-up, were in the final seconds of [...]
Posted in O'Henry | Also tagged March Madness, O'Henry |
Sports Saturday March Madness begins this weekend. Actually, to be exact, it begins for the big schools. Division III colleges are in the final week of their tournament. I know because my college was one step away from making the final four. For the first time ever, St. Mary’s College of Maryland sent a team [...]
Sports Saturday Once again, one of the most hated teams in the country resides atop the NCAA basketball rankings: Duke University. In today’s post I find literary equivalents for the general animus against the Blue Devils. For the life of me I can’t understand why Duke is so disliked. Granted, I myself dislike Duke, but [...]
We can become jaded with professional sports. This past off season saw LeBron James creating a three-ring circus out of his move from Cleveland to Miami. The grand entrance of players into the arena on any given night seems almost parodic, more in the spirit of P. T. Barnum than epic invocation. Therefore it’s good [...]
Sports Saturday Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? François Villon There’s not much going on in the sports world at the moment. Soccer’s World Cup now seems like a dream, the last major golf tournament has been played (with Tiger magic seemingly on indefinite hold), and football, basketball, hockey, and tennis’s U.S. Open await in [...]
Sports Saturday Lebron James has been taking a lot of heat recently for joining the Miami basketball team. (Did you catch the pun?) This past trading season was termed “the Lebron Sweepstakes,” and teams from around the country trekked to Cleveland to play court to “King James.” James made the occasion particularly gaudy by persuading [...]
In his heyday, his only vulnerability Sports Saturday The Orlando arena was electric. The Magic, having lost their first home game against the Boston Celtics, were in a must-win situation. To lose the first two games of a playoff series at home is almost certain death, but they had fought back from an 11-point fourth-quarter [...]
Sports Saturday Once again March Madness is gripping America. Once again we see Cinderella teams upsetting the giants (Northern Iowa upsetting top-seeded Kansas, Butler upsetting mighty Syracuse) and games won or lost on remarkable shots made in the waning seconds (Murray State, Michigan State). Maryland, the team I was rooting for, made a miraculous last [...]
Sports Saturday We are entering that time of year when the country goes crazy over college basketball and March Madness. Actually, March Madness came early to my school because the small college Division III tournament begins two weeks before that of the big boys. St. Mary’s College of Maryland seldom wins conference titles in sports—it’s [...]
