Two Things You Need Balls To Do: A Miscellany From a Former Professional Basketball Player Turned Poet
The basketball court = the page
Buzzer-beaters and miracle shots are non-existent in poetry—every
poem I’ve desperately heaved into the mail with more
prayer than craft or confidence has been off the mark.
Uniforms:
You need one to play pro ball.
Vs.
You can write in only your undies, or in just an Allman Brothers
Concert t-shirt, or better yet, nothing more than your housecoat
and dark socks, sans sports bra…no one cares.
Once you’re issued a uniform on a professional basketball
team, you’re an official professional.
Vs.
Until you publish a book, you’re in a developing league,
i.e. playing for love of the game.
You can exaggerate, embellish, imagine or lie about what
happens in a poem.
Vs.
In basketball, a man or woman in stripes will blow a whistle
that means, ‘Yeah, right. You know you slapped her arm.
I saw you.’
Basketball, like poetry, is a universal language, but not
yet like fiction and fútbol, but we’re working
on it.
Traveling: (a) in poetry is encouraged, (b) in basketball
will land you on the bench.
Sitting: (a) again, highly encouraged in poetry, (b) not so great in basketball, regardless of whether it’s a bench or a chair.
Solitariness: (a) a must for writing poetry, (b) technically speaking, it’s not possible to play basketball alone (however, some people are much better when they have no opponent).
Suicides: (a) not good for poets, ever, (b) never good for basketball players either.
Fouls = Rejection Letters
BUT in poetry, you don’t have to keep track of the #
you accumulate, which is a good thing for some of us. (In
the event there is a rejection letter limit, please, I’d
rather not know.)
The Matter of Rejection Letters: Sure they hurt. They bruise
the ego a little. This is where basketball comes in handy—remember
‘No Blood, No Foul,’ and, ‘You’re
either hurt, or you’re injured.’ If your fingers
aren’t broken, if your nose isn’t bleeding, get
out there. Plus, getting your 3-pt shot blocked (a.k.a. rejected,
stuffed, packed, denied, shut down, faced, etc.) into the
3rd row by Chamique Holdsclaw in the NCAA Finals, in front
of over 30,000 people, and on national TV, is so-much-worse
than having the New Yorker reject you quietly, politely, and
over the privacy of your email. Another thing, in basketball,
no one will give you cryptic pointers about your shot, like
‘Memorable, but needs culling.’
Injuries:
I tore my ACL, meniscus, and MCL (the unhappy triad), fractured
my leg and wrist, severed a blood vessel under my eye socket,
had numerous concussions, many jambed fingers, dislocated
a shoulder, gritted through IT-Band Syndrome and cortisone
shots, pulled muscles, sprained ankles that I still have nightmares
about—all playing basketball.
Vs.
Once, I was rushing to the post office to make a post-mark
deadline and I stubbed my toe on the curb out front.
Similarity:
The cost of basketball shoes, which need to be replaced every
3 months, is equal to the amount you’ll spend on contests.
Which brings me to contests:
For those of us ‘retirees,’ the absence of the
thrill of competition has left us hungry and desperate. I
am, to my detriment, a contest junkee, often foregoing open
submissions because I’m determined to win something,
ANYTHING, one last time. It’s not the prize money I’m
after, it’s the word: Winner.
I’ve stooped so low as to only apply for fellowships
at universities that my college basketball team beat during
my playing days. If I’m rejected, at least I have the
satisfaction of knowing that, one time, not long ago, I was
the winner.
Another similarity: I used to be a champ at playing H-O-R-S-E
and recently I wrote a poem about a horse.
Nostalgia:
I know I can’t fill the void that basketball has left,
but some days when I rise from my desk chair and feel shooting
pain in my knees (which are not yet thirty in poetry years,
but in basketball years are ancient) and creaking in other
joints, I recognize these aches as close to what I once had.
And every now and then, I let go of a line or an image and
know instantly, as soon as it rolls from the curve of my mind
or my gut, that it’s going in, that it won’t rattle
around the rim, it won’t brick-up and fall short or
bounce too hard from the backboard, that it won’t fall
flat on the page…and it’s smooth and sure and
turns the net to flames, and as much as I want to stand and
watch it, and pat myself on the ass for how beautiful it is,
I know I have to keep moving on down the page.