Stingy Kids

Memorial Day

We reached Citi Field in time for the Mets batting practice, my first time witnessing this spectacle. The players were on right field, rolling on the grass, their arms and legs akimbo. Two stylish trainers would occasionally call out a drill and the guys would go into a different stretch, entirely out of synch. A flock of young women stood along the railing swooning as David Wright and Daniel Murphy twisted their hips. "I'm standing like twenty feet away," one woman said, talking into her cellphone. "Oh my god, he's looking at me!" another cried. Murphy and Wright looked back and laughed. Most of these players are younger than me, some quite a bit, a detail that really isn't relevant on the field. But in this particular crowd, the thought that any one of these players, with few exceptions, could be my younger brother was sobering. David and I moved quickly to get a better view of the pitchers, an area fraught with far less tension but where chances of coming way with a relic increase substantially. Our friend Tien had taken advantage of no line at the Shake Shack, so we ate burgers and watched Stokes, Takahashi, Green and Parnell warm up. I was prepared to let go of our original idea: to ask Brian Stokes to sign my jersey, the one David, my husband, had custom ordered for my birthday last year, before Stokes was on the official roster.  I asked the person next to me if batting practice etiquette discouraged asking for a signature. "They sometimes toss up balls but they don't usually sign stuff," he said. "See, they don't sign stuff," I told David, admittedly with some relief.  David kept reading his Mets program. "Just wait," he said.

Eventually, the guys started to wind down. Stokes sat down for a moment and looked around. "Do something!" I begged David, completely losing my nerve. He called out to Stokes, who turned in our direction and saw my jersey--Stokes 43--hanging over the railing.  He gave me a thumbs up. I gave him a thumbs up too. That seemed like a good story. 

A few moments later, Stokes got up and started signing some balls for fans further down the row. Most of the players walk past the balls scattered over the field, ignoring the entreaties of the fans. It's like feeding pigeons, David said. But Stokes was gracious and generous. I gathered my wits and waved my jersey in his direction. I insist that I called out to him but David is certain that I was mostly mute throughout this entire transaction. He came over and reached up for the jersey and our pen. "Where should I sign it?" he asked. "Anywhere!" I croaked. He signed his name in purple. "Over the heart!" I later exclaimed. "Or the boob," Tien noted. He tossed up the shirt and then reached down, grabbed a ball, and sent that up as well. I heard murmurs all around me. The purple Sharpie followed. A better story. 

The ball Stokes gave me is slightly worn, with grass stains along its red seams. It still has the scent of a new ball. I was prepared to turn my jersey into a relic, but the ball caught me by surprise.  I tossed it around yesterday as I contemplated new turns in my work. It has life in it yet.

The Yips

This past Sunday,  Mike Pelfrey, a starting pitcher for the New York Mets, balked at the mound three times in a game against the San Francisco Giants.  Baseball rules spell out clearly what constitutes a balk.  It's not uncommon but it is costly, as runners on base instantly advance to the next base.  Three times in one game is, unfortunately, uncommon.  Pelfrey blamed it on a temporary case of the yips, a sudden and inexplicable loss of ability. 

First baseman Jeremy Reed later told reporters that he tried to say something to Pelfrey to get his mind back in the game but had little experience in that role.  Sometime jams in baseball can be resolved by one perfect pitch, but what if the pitch is lodged somewhere, out of reach.  What line can you cast to get it out?  

In fall 1995, I attended a Galway Kinnell-Gary Snyder reading at the University of Richmond.  I was with a friend who was an avid Kinnell fan, and on the drive to the campus, she tried to describe the experience of hearing him read his poetry live.  "You'll have to hear it for yourself," she told me, giving up.  The theme of the reading was the environment.  Snyder read new poems and a few from Turtle Island, which won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  Then he turned the podium to Kinnell.  My friend was right.  Kinnell had a wonderful, deep voice and read his poems in measured and steady cadences.  It was an example for me of how to be a good reader of poetry without engaging in theatrics.  After reading some of his poems, he shared "One Ordinary Evening" by Virginia Hamilton Adair, who published her first collection at the age of 83.  (Ants on the Melon was published the following year.)  As far as poetry readings go, this was excellent.

Then Kinnell announced that the last poem he would read would be "The Bear," his signature poem.  It's a long poem, and what made Kinnell's readings of The Bear so famous is that he could do it entirely from memory.  So he began--

In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.

A few stanzas into the poem, Kinnell stopped.  He started from the beginning and, again, stopped in the same place.  He paused and said that something was breaking his concentration.   Like others, I looked around trying to find anything out of place, out of the ordinary.  But the door was closed, no one was going in and out, and we were quiet.  Did he see something we couldn't see?  It quickly became clear that Kinnell would not get out of that jam and, then, from one of the front rows, a man whispered the line that had been misplaced in Kinnell's memory.  Without glancing up Kinnell repeated the line and kept going.  He read this entire, brutal and gorgeous poem out loud.  When he finished, he reached into the cheering audience and grabbed the man by the hand, grateful that he had got him through the inning.

El beisbolista, el poeta

Miguel Batista is a published poet and novelist--he's also a relief pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.  He started his MLB career in 1992 with the Pittsburgh Pirates but hasn't spent that long with any team, nine in total.  Overall, he's had a solid career but his performance this season has been uneven.  This is what the Red Sox commentators were observing when one of them mentioned that he also wrote poetry.  "You don't hear that often.  A baseball player who is also a poet.  And he's published too."  Upon hearing this, my head exploded.

Batista's official website represents all sides of the man: poet, writer, musician, baseball player and (touchingly) human being.  In his own words:

Dominicano por destino, pelotero por profesión, poet por pasión" es una frase  que resume la vida de Miguel Batista. Porque para hablar de él hay que viajar un poco más allá de su prestigio como jugador de  béisbol y ahondar en sus valores humanos, así como en las miles de páginas en que se revela su vocación por la palabra.

Dominican by birth, pitcher by profession, poet by vocation" sums up Miguel Batista's life in an nutshell.  To really understand who he is, you have to dig deeper than his fame as a Major League Baseball player, and get to know his human values.  You have to immerse yourself in the thousands of pages he has penned as a poet and novelist, revealing his heartfelt passion for the written word.

Baseball season affords players very little down time.  Apparently, Dustin Pedroia and Terry Francona play cribbage before games.  A lot of players tune out with video games.  Batista writes.  His first book--Sentimientos en blanco y negro--slowly came together, in fits and starts: 

...pese a su agitada agenda deportiva y aprovechando su escaso tiempo libre, en aviones, en el "clubhouse" o donde fuera, Miguel iba escribiendo en papeles sueltos o libretas, sus sueños, sus dudas, temores y amores.

In spite of his hectic schedule and little free time, Miguel wrote on scraps of paper and notebooks, in the dugout, on airplanes, wherever he happened to be.  He wrote about his dreams, his doubts, his fears, his loves.  It was 1999, and he never imagined that any of his writings might be published one day.

Something about this process--it's fragmentary quality--reminds me of Marina Tsvetaeva, an early twentieth century Russian poet.  I read once how Tsvetaeva would quickly pen a line poetry while making dinner or tending to her daughters.  Granted she worked under particularly straitened circumstances, but a number of great poets have juggled writing with full-time careers in other professions--for example, Wallace Stevens (lawyer) and William Carlos Williams (physician).

There are a few poems in Spanish and English on his website.  Read them and make your own assessment of his work.  What interests me, and what I admire, is that Batista makes time for a creative life.  And he doesn't compartmentalize it.  It isn't relegated, as it was for Robert Mitchum, to a secret, private practice.  It's all there in the open--the good, bad and uneven--"...we kindly/ surrender to the most beautiful feeling/ we have always known" ("Perfect Stranger").

PEN World Voices: Poetry Reading

Blurry photo of Wayne Koestenbaum and Nicole Brossard reading "Transcreation." 5/1/09

poem to understand
how people bend
before an idea
their hair barely brushing the depth of silence

Poem(é), Nicole Brossard

5/1: After "Discovering Unbearable Truths," I headed to the Bowery Poetry Club for two events: Poetry Reading  and The Translation Slam.  This post will address the reading.  The slam requires it's own space (you'll soon understand).

What drew me to the reading, honestly, was the opportunity to hear Nicole Brossard, one of my favorite writers, read her work in person.  I've heard that she's a charismatic and dynamic reader of her own work and she did not disappoint.

My notes are very fragmentary.  I would jot down, quickly, a few observations or lines after each author finished reading.  Looking back on my notes, I find myself scratching my head.  Why did I write "nice belly"  with regard to Brossard?  I realize that most of my notes have more to do with the performance of the poems than what the poets actually read.  And what they wore.  Here you go:

PEN World Voices: Discovering Unbearable Truths

Uwe Kolbe and Uljana Wolf in conversation with Susan Bernofsky

I arrived late, after Uljana Wolf had read her poems, but in time to hear Uwe Kolbe read "Fathers and Sons."  The panel description tells us that "These two writers from Germany woke up one day to realize that their lives were built on some terrible lies. Uwe Kolbe discovered that his own father had been spying on him for the Stasi, and Uljana Wolf had a similar awakening. Find out how they put the truth of their lives back together, came to reinterpret their pasts, and how these understandings influenced their writing."  From this description, one can draw a connection to Kolbe's poem, even though it doesn't read explicitly autobiographical.  

Wolf and Kolbe offered reflections on their status as post-war writers, though they represent different  generations.  Kolbe was already an adult in 1989; Wolf, a ten-year old child.  Their perspectives and experiences may differ but they acknowledge that so much remains to be uncovered and understood with regard to East Germany, and their works respectively emerge from this desire to make sense of the past.  They continue to breathe the "air of suspicion," as Kolbe calls it.  At the same time, their work has also moved in other directions, to other times and places.

Q&A: An audience member was not pleased by what she perceived to be an evasion of the original topic.  "Can we address the topic of the panel?" meaning, I suppose, the personal 'unbearable truths' hinted at in the description.  I understand that hearing these personal narratives may have motivated attendance but the question also missed the point, which is how these true stories find expression in or shape their poems.  Someone at the festival said "poetry concerns itself with the truth."  This isn't a point I care to argue, but the panel highlighted a familiar tension between talkshow truth and partial truths.  How does poetry concern itself with what is unbearably or unbelievably true?  Maybe like this:

FATHER AND SON

Keeping the distance 
and staying close together 
with dangling arms. 
The father the uniform, 
the son with Rasta hair. 
The Father's got Prussia in his rucksack, 
the son on the surfboard 
towards the mouth of the river. 
The Father travelling, 
the son the internal emigration. 
The Father the letters, 
the son doesn‘t speak. 
Father, who takes it easy, 
son to his heart. 
Fighting each other without rules, 
more seriously than anytime at the playground, 
longer than lifelong. 
The Fathers never die, 
one hears since ears have existed, 
and seldom do the sons live.

© Translation: 2001, Sapphire/Ramona Lofton

What is the true story:  In 1989, after the Wall came down, some artists were "invited" to see their Stasi files.  It was discovered that the poet Sacha Anderson, a friend of many East German artists, had been a Stasi informant.  "Like a spider sitting in a net."

In 1992, Kolbe was able to read his file.  "[It was] like someone wrote you a biography, and autobiography, yet you had no idea."  He flipped through the pages, and came upon a few written in familiar type.  He recognized it as his father's typewriter print.  Kolbe was estranged from his father, and when he confronted him, his father defended his actions, claiming that the information he provided kept the Stasi from engaging in more extensive investigations.  "I defended you," his father said.  Another informer was a good, older friend.  According to Kolbe, that betrayal carried more of a sting.

Citing Gabriel García Márquez as an example, Kolbe remarked that "most of what 'real' literature is is telling your own story."  Post-war writers "are just telling their own story, coming from different places...east or west, or whatever." 

From where I was sitting, I had trouble hearing Wolf and didn't take as many notes when she spoke.  Her poems are wonderful, mesmerizing.  Here's a link to a few from DICHTionary, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.