Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball

by Todd Davis (Editor)

If baseball is the sport of nostalgic prose, basketball’s movement, myths, and culture are truly at home in verse. In this extraordinary collection of essays, poets meditate on what basketball means to them: how it has changed their perspective on the craft of poetry; how it informs their sense of language, the body, and human connectedness; how their love of the sport made a difference in the creation of their poems and in the lives they live beyond the margins. Walt Whitman saw the origins of poetry as communal, oral myth making. The same could be said of basketball, which is the beating heart of so many neighborhoods and communities in this country and around the world. On the court and on the page, this “poetry in motion” can be a force of change and inspiration, leaving devoted fans wonderstruck.

234 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

Todd Davis is the author of four full-length collections of poetry--In the Kingdom of the Ditch, The Least of These, Some Heaven, and Ripe—as well as of a limited edition chapbook, Household of Water, Moon, and Snow: The Thoreau Poems. He edited the nonfiction collection, Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball, and co-edited Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets. His poetry has been featured on the radio by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac and by Ted Kooser in his syndicated newspaper column American Life in Poetry. His poems have won the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. More than 300 of his poems have appeared in such noted journals and magazines as American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Ecotone, North American Review, Indiana Review, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Image, Poet Lore, Orion, West Branch, River Styx, Poetry Daily, Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Sou’wester, Verse Daily, and Poetry East. He teaches creative writing, American literature, and environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona College.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's basketball season! For those of us who read poetry, we may believe that baseball rules the poetic world when it comes to sports. (This may be a naive and biased remark -- I grew up in a baseball household and currently live in a baseball home. I don't know a lot about other sports -- when I read poetry that mentions sports, I instantly pick up and remember the baseball references) However, the writers in Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball want to change this perception. This collection, edited by Todd Davis, is not an anthology of poetry. Instead, the poets' essays found within its pages seek to find the connections between the art of basketball and the art of poetry.

In the introduction, Todd Davis and J.D. Scrimgeour note the relationship to poetry and the beginnings of basketball: "Just three months before the death of Walt Whitman, Dr. James Naismith nailed two peach baskets to the wall of the gymnasium at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts." Davis and Scrimgeour go on to explain that "Whitman doubtless would have been pleased with Naismith's game, born of necessity and joy, requiring ego and egolessness." The death of Whitman and the birth of basketball occurred well over 100 years ago. Still, many of today's writers readily realize the connection between basketball and poetry. What follows the introduction is a collection of pieces that explore this connection.

Some essays focus more on memoir writing: others strive to connect the art of basketball to the art of poetry. For instance, Jim Daniels, in his work, pieces together his failed attempts at basketball while cataloguing his journey to poetry. Stephen Dunn, on the other hand, seeks to spend more time examining the art between basketball and poetry noting, "Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence."

Many other poets, including Jeff Gundy, Jack Ridl, Richard Newman and Marjorie Maddox, are included in this anthology and most of their works fall in the loose genre of what may be defined as memoir. Still, there are other essays that strive to deliver their messages while reaching outside the boundaries of essay writing. For instance, Natalie Diaz in "Two Things You Need Balls to Do: A Miscellany from a Former Professional Basketball Player Turned Poet" (my favorite piece in the collection!), compares and contrasts basketball and poetry in a witty, ironic voice. For instance, she states that when it comes to uniforms you need one to play pro ball, but to write poetry, you "can write in only your undies, or in a coffee-stained Allman Brothers Concert T-shirt." She also talks about her many physical injuries playing basketball, saying, when it comes to injuries and poetry, "Once, I was rushing to the post office to make a postmark deadline, and I stubbed my toe on the curb out front."

Do you have a basketball player who is also a poet in your life? Fast Break to Line Break would make a great present. In fact, I would say that this collection is a great gift for those basketball players who would be a bit afraid to read poetry. Certainly, the essays in this collection would change their minds!