Sports Saturday For the football games this weekend, I found a passage from a poem or passage from a poem that pertains to the name of each team. Enjoy. Atlanta Falcons vs. Green Bay Packers The high-flying Atlanta Falcons boast, among other things, the incomparable receiver Roddy White, who soars skyward to pull down passes. […]
Tag Archives: Football
A Poem for Every Playoff Team
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry Ohio", "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner", "Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me", "Osprey", "Raven", "The Patriot", "Windhover", Delmore Schwartz, Edgar Allan Poe, Gerald Manley Hopkins, James Wright, Jungle, Kay Ryan, Randall Jarrell, Robert Browning, Sports, Upon Sinclair Comments closed
Peyton Manning as Moby Dick?!
Sports Saturday In anticipation of football’s “Wild Card Weekend,” which begins today, I see that a sports writer has invoked Herman Melville’s masterpiece. Dan Graziano believes that Indianapolis Colt quarterback Peyton Manning has become Rex Ryan’s Moby Dick. He has beaten the New York Jets coach so many times that Ryan has become obsessed with […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Fuzzy-Wuzzy", Alfred Lord Tennyson, East of Eden, Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Jungle Books, Moby Dick, Rudyard Kipling, Sports, Ulysses Comments closed
2010 Sports, Seen through Literature
Sports Saturday – 2010 in Review Since New Year’s Day falls on a “Sports Saturday” this year, I’ll take the occasion to review the year in sports through the vantage point of renewal. The first year of the new decade had a number of joyous firsts. It was a year when the city of New […]
Bill Belichick as Professor Moriarty
Sports Saturday The New England Patriots are dominating the National Football League once again, and as an Indianapolis Colts fan I find this development depressing. Over the past decade the Colts and Patriots have had the game’s fiercest rivalry, and fans of each team routinely root against whichever team is playing the other. I am […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bill Belichick, Sports Comments closed
What to Make of a Diminished Peyton
Sports Saturday “The question that he frames in all but words,” Robert Frost writes in his “Ovenbird” sonnet, “is what to make of a diminished thing.” This poem has always had a special place in my heart.The ovenbird is not a bird that sings when June is bustin’ out all over.Rather, it is a “mid-summer and […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Ovenbird", Peyton Manning, Robert Frost, Sports Comments closed
Michael Vick and the Scarlet Letter
Sports Saturday Quarterback Michael Vick of the Philadelphia Eagles continues to be the most interesting story in American sports. After spending two years in jail for participating in dog fighting, against all predictions he has emerged to become one of the most dynamic players in the National Football League. In the last three weeks he […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Michael Vick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Redemption, Scarlet Letter, Sin, Sports Comments closed
Manning vs. Brady, Hector vs. Achilles
Sports Saturday Tomorrow will witness the fiercest rivalry in American football—and maybe in American sports—as Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts travels to Boston to play against Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. Many are beginning to believe that football has never seen a quarterback rivalry that matches this one. Which of the two […]
The Suicidal Beauty of Football
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 […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry Ohio", James Wright, Sports Comments closed
Football’s Culture of Violence – A Response
Sports Saturday Discussion of violent football hits has dominated the sports airwaves ever since the nation witnessed a series of frightening high-impact collisions last weekend. In apparent panic, the National Football League has been handing out large fines and threats of suspension to players, including a $75,000 fine to James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Circe Mud Poems, Margaret Atwood, Sports, violence Comments closed
