Ad Hockey
Well, the NHL has finally gotten its act back together, and the hockey season has started, not that I'll be able to see any of it for a while (at least not without begging local barkeeps to locate the Outdoor Life Network). Still, there's a certain puck-happy feeling in the Sacramento air, for some reason, so I've decided to post two hockey poems in celebration. The first is a fairly straightforward account of what it's like to play goalie (though of course it's also about writing poetry, in a sense):
Tending Goal
To keep emptiness immaculate,
I practice an old and reactive art.
This frame is solid, webbed and ready
to take whatever my selfish body
will not smother, absorb or deflect.
I crouch on tiptoe, turning my back
on what I protect, assessing the streak
and sinew of play, the likelihood
of facing an as yet invisible shot,
cramped in the moment’s crowded, tense
uncertainty— sometimes my stance
is justified, sometimes erased
by chance or intention’s quick release.
The best is when I’m already down
and in danger of letting a weak one in
on a negligent rebound— I offer my hands,
my face, my chest, I invite the wounds
instead of the guilty ghostliness
of goalies, their untouched irrelevance.
I ask for the unintended gift
of inaccurate desire— the long shift
drawing to its natural close
with a point-blank effort, a drive to the glove
hand side, high enough for me to wave
at it, flag it down, hold it, make the lucky
save even better with a snatch and a look
at the fruit that even bad netminders pluck
every now and then.
But this garden, the game
cannot go on if I don’t give my charmed
and tarnished prize back, straighten up and turn
to what was missed— this form, still aligned
with the crease in the mind to which all my dreams tend.
Yes, I get a bit self-conscious at the end there, and slip in a justification for my formalist leanings. But think about it: all games have their rules, and why shouldn't poetry derive its pleasures in the same way? All right, that's enough. I hope you enjoyed the experiential side of the piece, before the medicine went down.
The second one is much more abstract and ambitious; it's an attempt to use hockey to offer my Canadian version of what Tim Kahl (aka Victor Schnickelfritz) calls The American Myth. It's about the brain drain, the hockey drain, the lost hockey season of 2004-5, and the greatest player ever to lace them up. Excuse the clichés, they're part of the pleasure of sports for me too.
Gretzky in Exile
Driveways, drained pools, parking lots,
church gymnasia, tennis courts,
sunken playgrounds, dead-end streets,
bunker-basements, backyard rinks—
the sport that sends us up the snowbank
into the ditch, that stretches the length
of the neighborhood, makes these places ours.
The sponsoring world sees its new garage doors
spotted and dented. The caged crowd roars.
The semi-official national game
is its own invasion, the training ground
for mercenaries, eminent domain
in a country conquered, reclaimed and now free
to follow this ritual anarchy.
It sends its warriors out, not to die
but to fight for a rebound, cleanly but hard,
till the final minutes of a lopsided hour
when anything goes. Our border’s ajar
like a penalty box waiting for the returns
of the hard-nosed goalscorers, skilful goons
and crafty veterans nobody owns
anymore. This arena’s horizon extends
as far as the referee’s whistle resounds,
and as long as it takes to step out of bounds
or stray offside. If we do leave,
we carry the play to the people we love
however belatedly they may arrive
at our sanctuary, our testing place.
This is the wound we know we must nurse
with fiercer pride the longer we chase
a final cure. When we lose, our own blood
deserts us. It hurts to be this good
and not always the best. If there were hockey gods
they would keep us together, demand that the rest
of the world try to beat us here, on our home ice,
but we can’t wait around for that breakaway pass,
so we colonize the world with the game
that transforms us. Spaces that keep us young
with their lucky limits, their structured time,
these curbs and obstacles, gaps and slopes,
are worn spots where private fantasy slips
into common dreams. Every phenom escapes.
In writing this one, I asked myself: if W.H. Auden were alive and a hockey fan, how would he approach the subject? Well, not really, but maybe I was looking for that kind of sophisticated-yet-innocent tone you get in middle Auden.
So I'm looking for comments, of course, but also suggestions for other great sports/hockey poems. I myself can recommend Steven (Stephen?) Scriber's "All-Star Poet," despite its title. It's very earthy hockey writing, and very anecdotal. More like highly compressed stories than full-dress poems, but well suited to its subject.
Tending Goal
To keep emptiness immaculate,
I practice an old and reactive art.
This frame is solid, webbed and ready
to take whatever my selfish body
will not smother, absorb or deflect.
I crouch on tiptoe, turning my back
on what I protect, assessing the streak
and sinew of play, the likelihood
of facing an as yet invisible shot,
cramped in the moment’s crowded, tense
uncertainty— sometimes my stance
is justified, sometimes erased
by chance or intention’s quick release.
The best is when I’m already down
and in danger of letting a weak one in
on a negligent rebound— I offer my hands,
my face, my chest, I invite the wounds
instead of the guilty ghostliness
of goalies, their untouched irrelevance.
I ask for the unintended gift
of inaccurate desire— the long shift
drawing to its natural close
with a point-blank effort, a drive to the glove
hand side, high enough for me to wave
at it, flag it down, hold it, make the lucky
save even better with a snatch and a look
at the fruit that even bad netminders pluck
every now and then.
But this garden, the game
cannot go on if I don’t give my charmed
and tarnished prize back, straighten up and turn
to what was missed— this form, still aligned
with the crease in the mind to which all my dreams tend.
Yes, I get a bit self-conscious at the end there, and slip in a justification for my formalist leanings. But think about it: all games have their rules, and why shouldn't poetry derive its pleasures in the same way? All right, that's enough. I hope you enjoyed the experiential side of the piece, before the medicine went down.
The second one is much more abstract and ambitious; it's an attempt to use hockey to offer my Canadian version of what Tim Kahl (aka Victor Schnickelfritz) calls The American Myth. It's about the brain drain, the hockey drain, the lost hockey season of 2004-5, and the greatest player ever to lace them up. Excuse the clichés, they're part of the pleasure of sports for me too.
Gretzky in Exile
Driveways, drained pools, parking lots,
church gymnasia, tennis courts,
sunken playgrounds, dead-end streets,
bunker-basements, backyard rinks—
the sport that sends us up the snowbank
into the ditch, that stretches the length
of the neighborhood, makes these places ours.
The sponsoring world sees its new garage doors
spotted and dented. The caged crowd roars.
The semi-official national game
is its own invasion, the training ground
for mercenaries, eminent domain
in a country conquered, reclaimed and now free
to follow this ritual anarchy.
It sends its warriors out, not to die
but to fight for a rebound, cleanly but hard,
till the final minutes of a lopsided hour
when anything goes. Our border’s ajar
like a penalty box waiting for the returns
of the hard-nosed goalscorers, skilful goons
and crafty veterans nobody owns
anymore. This arena’s horizon extends
as far as the referee’s whistle resounds,
and as long as it takes to step out of bounds
or stray offside. If we do leave,
we carry the play to the people we love
however belatedly they may arrive
at our sanctuary, our testing place.
This is the wound we know we must nurse
with fiercer pride the longer we chase
a final cure. When we lose, our own blood
deserts us. It hurts to be this good
and not always the best. If there were hockey gods
they would keep us together, demand that the rest
of the world try to beat us here, on our home ice,
but we can’t wait around for that breakaway pass,
so we colonize the world with the game
that transforms us. Spaces that keep us young
with their lucky limits, their structured time,
these curbs and obstacles, gaps and slopes,
are worn spots where private fantasy slips
into common dreams. Every phenom escapes.
In writing this one, I asked myself: if W.H. Auden were alive and a hockey fan, how would he approach the subject? Well, not really, but maybe I was looking for that kind of sophisticated-yet-innocent tone you get in middle Auden.
So I'm looking for comments, of course, but also suggestions for other great sports/hockey poems. I myself can recommend Steven (Stephen?) Scriber's "All-Star Poet," despite its title. It's very earthy hockey writing, and very anecdotal. More like highly compressed stories than full-dress poems, but well suited to its subject.
posted by Brad at 11:48 AM
5 Comments:
Heh, I like your title for the post. And the poems, too.
If W.H. Auden were a hockey fan? Now that's a proposition. Is anyone even allowed to be gay and be a hockey fan?
Next thing you're going to tell me is that some of the greatest boxers of this century were queer. Ali? Queer. Marciano? Queer. Sugar Ray Leonard? Well, that one's obvious.
Though I really like the last sentence "Every phenom escapes." I'm not sure it dovetails, logically speaking, with what comes before. I think that the private fantasy in to common dreams is a bit reminiscent of the previous piece when you "have the medicine go down" there with a move toward dreams. I wonder if the "dreams" might be a comfort spot where you go when the poem calls for some other kind of harder insight?
I've always like Bly's prose poem "The Hockey Poem." It has four parts. 1. the goalie. 2. The Attack. 3. Trouble 4. The goalie.
Here is the first goalie section:
The Boston College team has gold helmets, under which the long black hair of the Roman centurian curls out . . . Ant they begin. How weird the goalies look with their African masks! The goalie is so lonely anyway, guarding a basket with nothing in it, his wide lower legs wide as ducks' . . . No matter what gift he is given, he always rejects it . . . He has a number like 1, a name like Mrazek, sometimes wobbling his legs waiting for the puck, or curling up like a baby in the womb to hold it, staying a second too long on the ice.
The goalie has gone out to mid-ice, and now he sails sadly back to his own box, slowly; he looks prehistoric with his rhinoceros legs; he looks as if he's going to become extinct, and he's just taking his time . . .
When the players are at the other end, he begins sadly sweeping the ice in front of his house; he is the old witch in the woods, waiting for the children to come home.
And here is my own hockey piece. It's an ancient one.
Detroitus
After the Tigers had gone,
the Red Wings were the last team left in the city.
The forgotten core of hockey faithfuls turned
their sets off and hurried through the streets towards
Joe Louis Arena to keep the rain from
washing another team out into the suburbs.
The rain drained off the interstate into the river
flowing south toward Ohio where
there is no pure form of hockey.
The ice there can’t hold a blade past February.
And what remained in the city had to be
protected. Hockey fans wore riot gear and
passed out scorecards full of player statistics,
and outside the beltway we cheered for
the Red Wings to make the playoffs,
our mothers and fathers staying up with us on
school nights to watch the news and see the
highlight footage of all the scoring and fighting.
Then the Kronk Gym migrated north of Eight Mile where
the manufacture of glass jaws was unavoidable.
The tribes of summer softball leagues drifted toward
the suburban fields of clover. Pickup games moved
from the playgrounds to the driveways.
The downtown was famous for all the parking
available. And there were rumors that the ghost of
Gordie Howe haunted the souls of tourists
who came to visit the Ambassador Bridge and
Greektown. All that was left in the city was
hockey. So the mayor made plans for new
construction projects, but at all the sites for
renewal they kept unearthing the bones of
dead hockey players. They were spread out over
the city like a mess of spare machine
parts—the teeth of reckless centers,
the fractured shins of defensemen, the vertebrae of
attackers brutally checked into the boards.
For so many years the Red Wings held our
attention, and as each generation of kids came over
the bridge from Windsor to replace the fallen wings and
goalies, the fans kept the spirit of the city alive.
They prayed for victory after victory and held each
one sacred. They are the faithful who believe in their
city, who believe there is no greater form of
drama than being loyal to your side.
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Love the poem and title also....I must be sooooo shallow because I never realized one can write poems about hockey.
Cool blog thanks for posting this information.
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