New and Selected Poems, 1957-2011

Basketball's the American Game Because it's Hysterical

94 BASKETBAll’S ThE AMERICAN GAME BECAUSE IT’S hYSTERICAl “Basketball’s the American game because it’s hysterical,” says Lorrie Goldensohn as the players and coaches come off the bench and the crowd is on its feet yelling and the Knicks are ahead 97-95 with just over three minutes to go in the fourth quarter and Perry hits from the side and Lorrie’s husband, Barry, comes downstairs with a bottle of scotch and a guide to English verse. “Unless there is a new mind, there cannot be a new line,” he reads refilling our glasses. “Without invention the line will never again take on its ancient divisions . . .” All evening we have been watching the New York Knicks battling the Boston Celtics and having a running argument about free verse, traditional rhyming poetry, syllabic verse (“what’s the point in counting for counting’s sake?”), the critic Hugh Kenner, John Hollander’s Rhyme’s Reason, the variable foot and the American idiom. “In and out by Williams,” says the announcer, “he’s got a nose for the basket.” The crowd is on its feet again, roaring. 95 “We know nothing and can know nothing but the dance, to dance to a measure contrapuntally, Satyrically, the tragic foot,” Barry continues. The Celtics race down the court. “Talk about the green wave coming at you.” Bird hits and the Celtics even the score. “Basketball’s the American game because it’s like the variable foot,” says Lorrie, “it’s up in the air all the time. It’s quick and the floor is continually moving and there’s this short back and forth factor.” “What I like best about the game,” I say, “is shutting my eyes and tuning out the announcer and hearing Barry read and arguing about poetry and drinking and listening all the while to the music of seven-foot black herons in gym shoes, ten giant gazelles, the stirring squeak of twenty over-size sneakers on the varnished floor, a floor which has been carefully and ingeniously miked in advance for sound.” ...