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Line Drives : 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems
Line Drives : 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems presents the reader with an amazing set of baseball poems. The collection is incredibly enjoyable, but so far removed from the commonplace that it is a necessity addition to the fan of both baseball and poetry.
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"Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems deserves a Hall of Fame nomination for the sheer number and variety of poems it anthologizes for the first time. The strongest praise, however, goes to the quality of the collection. These are fine poems by writers at the top of their game, and the editors’ introduction is both wise and heartfelt. A grand slam!" — Don Johnson, editor of Hummers, Knucklers, and Slow Curves: Contemporary Baseball Poems
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In Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles wrote in their introduction, "We have attempted to organize the poems gathered here into five parts, the first four of which sketch a rough trajectory from youth through old age to death...Yet because this is baseball and there is always next year, part five pushes past the defeat inherent in both poetic and athletic striving to allow spring-that season of renewal-to come around again."
The two editors read "4,000 or so poems" then agreed upon the final set before organizing them into Line Drives. Their final selections are spectacular, the organization is perfect, and we believe it is the best collection of baseball poems ever assembled. Line Drives is so good that non-poetry lovers who pick it up will find that it remained in their hands until the final verse was read!
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| Editorial Reviews |
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From Iowa Alumni Magazine: "With Line Drives, editors Horvath and Wiles have compiled a brilliant collection of poetry that looks beyond the bright lights of the world of baseball. It offers a fresh view of players and fans, and helps explain America’s love affair with baseball."
From Books Under Review: "I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Sometimes with anthologies of sports-related fiction/poetry, I've been disappointed because there seemed to be differing levels of quality. With Line Drives, I was satisfied because all of the poems were worth reading-they offered a consistently high level of quality and all had interesting insights or fun ideas. Then there were a number of them that were among the best baseball poems I have ever read. Katharine Harer's 'The Cure' speaks with a tremendous depth of understanding of the game and the emotions that go into our continued obsession with it."
From Sports-Books-Online.net: "When it comes to baseball poetry, nobody knows his stuff better than Tim Wiles, and that expertise is evident in the outstanding quality of this collection. Many of the expected poets are here, but so are many I'd never heard of before whose work I am glad to have been exposed to. The poems range in tone from somber and serious to playful and irreverent. One of my particular favorites is the entry by former pitcher Dan Quisenberry, who was a funny guy and had quite a way with words. I keep this book on my nightstand and try to read one poem each night before I go to sleep. Except I often have a hard time reading just one."
From Baseball Almanac: "To put it simply, Line Drives is the best book of baseball poems ever gathered under one cover. Period."
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| Back Cover from
Line Drives : 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems |
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“We wait for baseball all winter long,” Bill Littlefield wrote in Boston Magazine a decade ago, “or rather, we remember it and anticipate it at the same time. We re-create what we have known and we imagine what we are going to do next. Maybe that’s what poets do, too.”
Poetry and baseball are occasions for well-put passion and expressive pondering, and just as passionate attention transforms the prose of everyday life into poetry, it also transforms this game we write about, play, or watch. Editors Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles unite their own passion for baseball and poetry in this collection, Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, providing a forum for ninety-two poets. Line after line, like baseball itself game after game and season after season, these poems manage to make the old and the familiar new and surprising.
The poems in these pages invite interrogation, and the reader—like the true baseball fan—must be willing to play the game, for these poems are fun, fresh, angry, nostalgic, meditative, and meant to be read aloud. They are keen on taking us deeply into baseball as sport and intent on offering countless metaphors for exploring history, religion, love, family, and self-identity. Each poem delivers images of pure beauty as the poets speak of murder and ghost runners and old ball gloves, of baseball as a tie that binds families—and indeed the nation—together, of the game as a stage upon which no-nonsense grit and skill are routinely displayed, and of the delight experienced in being one amid a mindlessly happy crowd. This book is true to the game’s long season and to the lives of those the game engages.
Copyright © 2002 Southern Illinois University Press
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| Line Drives : 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems |
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The poem Baseball Almanac enjoyed the most from Line Drives : 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems was written by the late-great Kansas City Royal stopper Dan Quisenberry who essentially examined & explained his life through "Baseball Cards"—page 78-79 & reads in part:
Editor Tim Wiles is the director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. His baseball writings include a regular column in Cooperstown Freeman's Journal called "Letters in the Dirt" and poems which have appeared in both Elysian Fields Quarterly and Fan like this one:
Baseball
Baseball is
Baseball is a
Baseball is a game
Baseball is a game played
Baseball is a game played by
Baseball is a game played by two
Baseball is a game played by two teams
Baseball is a game played by two teams of
Baseball is a game played by two teams of nine
Baseball is a game played by two teams of nine players
Baseball is a game played by two teams of nine players each.
Baseball is a game played only in the National League.
Source: Tim Wiles in Elysian Fields Quarterly (2000) |
Did you know that editor Brooke Harvath is a professor of English at Kent State and the author of two collections of poetry—In a Neighborhood of Dying Light & Consolation at Ground Zero?
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