The Suicidal Beauty of Football

James Wright

James Wright

Sports Saturday

I’ve always been haunted by James Wright’s poem about high school football in working class Ohio. Wright’s fathers, living ruptured lives, hope for some kind of escape, some kind of renewed virility, through the football prowess of their teenage sons. Perhaps picking up on their parents’ desperation, their sons “gallop terribly” against each other. The poem captures Meredith’s mixed feelings about Martins Ferry, the steel town where he grew up.

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

James Wright

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

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