Archive for Poem

In which Pete Rose translates towering works of poetry.

In today’s episode, Pete Rose will translate Ezra Pound’s imagist opus “In a Station of the Metro” from the original English into Pete Rose American.

Mr. Pound’s original:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Mr. Rose’s translation:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Grocery list: Cigarettes, olive loaf, whore, a plan.

This has been “Poetry, Translation by Pete Rose.”

Villanelle week. By now you should know. Villanelle week.

Others have tried:

• Regarding Who Isn’t the Boss of Me
• Villabelle
• Fantasy Choices I Have Made
• Nick Punto, One Time, Tried to Break His Bat
• Who Should Be in the Hall of Fame?
• Tale of VandenHurk

Only one can succeed. This is poetry. Only one can succeed, and that one is me:

An expensive teak desk, not entirely unlike the author’s.

The author’s submission to Patrick Dubuque’s ridiculous Villanelle Challenge concerns less a baseballing theme proper and more the cursed insolence of Dubuque himself — and also, it turns out, the entire world.

Hey, Patrick Dubuque: you’re not the boss of me.
Did you consider that before assigning me an effing villanelle?
In point of fact, I’m the boss of you. Literally.

Read the rest of this entry »

In abiding with NotGraphs’ Villanelle Week:

Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat
A feat so large, and yet a man so small
Why would he even try to attempt that?

And during the World’s Series, too, at that
The culprit seems to barely bend at all
Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat

Some put-out rage, a wooden tit-for-tat
In failure, something needs to takes the fall
Why would he even try to attempt that?

If scrappiness was actually a stat
Number 8 would, in fact, lead them all
Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat

Perhaps it’s better just to utter “drat”
Less painful this, if slightly more banal
Why would he even try to attempt that?

A bruise is formed, a thigh is rendered flat
Bo Jackson’s snickers echo off the wall
Nick Punto, one time, tried to break his bat
Why would he even try to attempt that?

The winter season and its accompanying ham-based feasts have left all of us – yes, I mean all of us – somewhat indolent. The wire is quiet this time of year, the football playoffs are full of shouting and trumpet fanfares, and even hockey has crawled out of its burrow and glimpsed its own shadow, ensuring six weeks of a regular season. To stave off this baseball hypothermia, I issued a Villanelle Challenge to the esteemed authors of this fair site, its readers, and by extension, the world.

“What is a villanelle?” those of you with useful undergraduate degrees might ask. Wikipedia explains it best: “A villanelle (also known as villanesque) is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines.” Or, as Robert Wallace put it: “There are enough villanelles in English to convince us that poets like to make trouble for themselves.” Here are a few famous examples.

As with any real contest, the NotGraphs Villanelle Challenge offers no rewards and holds no serious purpose. Those who would like to submit their own poems can do so through the hotline; by the end of the week they will be read, judged with the utmost partiality, and the best of the best will be posted here on Friday. Think of the glory! Think of conquering the most imposing, ridiculous monument in English-language poetry! Think about finding a rhyming dictionary!

But first: a villanelle about the newly unemployed Rick VandenHurk.

The Tale of VandenHurk

Read the rest of this entry »

Lamentation: Wil Myers, when they traded you
To far, awfullest Florida,
A rifle report of no origins
Snapped across the prairie.

Patricia Neal looked up from her dishwater, if only for a moment.
And then resumed drowning her hands.
In Holcomb, old bones nestled deeper in the loam.

In Eastern Kansas those who married at 19 threaten their children
With Bill Self on a Shelf … and you.
“Wil Myers never did such a thing,”
Bloodied boys are told.

What will spare their husbands,
Whose eye sockets are filled by stupefied tumors trained to see
Nothing more than the defeats of this, the only county in the world?

In Western Missouri, there is a sameness to droughts and wives.
Two-pack-a-day communions, elected beasts wandering the diners and
Aching out smiles for the slackened honkeys
Who whittle at time until the pharmacy opens.

Their clapboard huts, mottled and foreclosed,
Lean and chirr in the wind.

Where is their consoling, Wil Myers?

Drumfire of the Plains, Moses of Switchgrass —
You are needed at once.

We are but blind pullets fallen from our nests.

Thou still unravished pride of quietness,
  Thou child of spectacle and facial hair,
Malign’d first baseman, how can time express
  Thy legacy, left in such sad repair
What die-cast legend haunts about thy shape
  Immortalized in resin, and in time?
    In some invis’ble Kingdome standeth thee?
  For semi-anonymity, what crime
Committed thee? By how didst thou escape
    The cavalcade of baseball revelry?

Read the rest of this entry »

In the upper reaches of a multipurpose stadium,
Thunder has been set afire.

In these distant perches,
In this nest of a hawk tent revival,
Cheap of the dollar, rich of the possible,
I am ransacking you with my 1972 mouth and my 5,000 B.C. cock.

Baseball is below us.
Baseball is about us.
Joe Rudi is working in a quarry.

The horizon is a waterbed.
Oakland is a dance move.
And we are fighter-fuckers.

On this stunted firmament,
Your teeth and blue damn jeans
Taste scared to death.

I am kissing you with my bad neighborhood.

Ode to Terrible Cubs Fans

You will give me a look
when I say I am a Cubs fan
not a fan of Cubs fans
give me a look
think me spiraling away
in a high-horse spreadsheet
=sum(Jacques Jones, Milton Bradley, Cap Anson)
=stdev(this Google search:Steve Bartman)
The answer is not undefined
but curiously enough
spread out the collective goodwill
to the bleacher bums —
the Cubs fan heroes —
and get
#DIV/0.

Maybe the problem isn’t the Friendly Confines
but the duo Old Style and man combined.
If I don’t like the brick behind the ivy,
if I don’t toast the party,
if I don’t mind the wave,
I might be the Terrible Cubs Fan,
but I will enjoy it my own way
and when I catch a homer,
be quick to give it away.

Oh, Mike Trout.
Why do you pout?
Are you worried you’ll make a fly ball out?
What’s that sad face all about?
You’re the best rookie in baseball, no doubt.

Oh, Mike Trout.
Why are you sore?
You’re the league’s best player, says Fangraphs WAR!
Did they run out of Mountain Dew at the store?
Check back tomorrow, they’ll surely have more.

Oh, Mike Trout.
Why are you sad?
Did you forget to TiVo the new Breaking Bad?
Did Pujols say something mean ‘bout your dad?
Or did you remember that nightmare you had?

Oh, Mike Trout.
It’ll all be O.K.
You aren’t wealthy now, but you will be some day.
You’ll buy a nice watch with liquid crystal display.
And a beautiful home down in Barnegat Bay.

Oh, Mike Trout.
Why must you fret?
Did your cousin crash his souped-up Chevette?
May I suggest hearing a nice string quartet?
Some Bartók would raise your spirits, I bet.

Oh, Mike Trout.
Not a classical fan?
Perhaps you’re more of a death metal man.
Maybe you enjoy the stylings of Steely Dan?
Switch out the music, but stick to the plan.

Oh, Mike Trout.
Why do you pout?
Are you worried you’ll make a fly ball out?
What’s that sad face all about?
You’re the best rookie in baseball, no doubt.