Besides "To an Athlete Dying Young"

September 17, 2017 6:53 AM

Looking for poems about sports and athletes. Any sport. Any time period. If it's not online, it would be great if you could provide the name of a book it's in.
posted by FencingGal to Media & Arts (27 answers total)

Casey at the Bat.
posted by Melismata at 7:00 AM on September 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

That was Pindar's whole career; here's an introduction, and if he sounds interesting there are lots of translations—just google around till you find one you like.
posted by languagehat at 7:07 AM on September 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio is possibly James Wright's second-best-known poem.
posted by drlith at 7:13 AM on September 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Sherman Alexie gives basketball the words it deserves in Father and Farther, which is mostly about his father, but also contains the best description of the game ever written:

Basketball is
a series of prayers.

Shoot the ball
and tell me

you believe
otherwise.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:36 AM on September 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

From magstheaxe, on the poetry of baseball: April Is The Cruelest Month / At The Oooold Baaaall Gaaaaaame!

And Samuel Allen's "To Satch" (in the comments) is marvelous.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:41 AM on September 17, 2017

Chunkey by Paul Muldoon (Chunkey was a North American sport played from around 600 CE until the 1800s.)
posted by frobozz at 7:50 AM on September 17, 2017

"Fightin' Was Natural" by Mya Angelou.

(and a fair chunk of 'Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali' is perusable through Google Books).
posted by mr. digits at 8:23 AM on September 17, 2017

Go to poets.org
Search for sports
They have a few essays and curated lists -
Poems about sports
Poems about sports for kids
Poems about sports for teachers

Etc.
So fun!
posted by littlewater at 8:52 AM on September 17, 2017

Henry Newbolt's poem Vitai Lampada is about cricket, at least initially.
posted by paduasoy at 9:10 AM on September 17, 2017

Catch by Robert Francis uses a game of catch as a metaphor for poetry. Not sure it's quite what you're looking for but here.
posted by Threeve at 10:23 AM on September 17, 2017

Baseball’s Sad Lexicon
By Franklin Pierce Adams

These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double—
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

First appeared in the New York Evening Mail on July 12, 1910, written about the Cubs infield.
posted by lyssabee at 10:29 AM on September 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

On Baseball and Verse covers a whole range of poetry about baseball.
posted by cushie at 10:55 AM on September 17, 2017

Analysis of Baseball by May Swenson comes instantly to mind.
posted by maryr at 11:43 AM on September 17, 2017

Here, from Poetry Foundation, are a list of poems about football, basketball, and baseball. Oddly, they don't seem to have a collection for hockey.
posted by maryr at 12:13 PM on September 17, 2017

Both Marianne Moore and Donald Hall wrote about baseball. Hall also wrote prose.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 12:53 PM on September 17, 2017

Bruce Dawe: Life Cycle
posted by Coaticass at 3:07 PM on September 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

A glossary of Australian words from the above: Carn is short for "come on", barracking is cheering and/or supporting, a bludger is a good-for-nothing or wastrel and the fandom described is for Australian Rules Football.
posted by Coaticass at 3:16 PM on September 17, 2017

There is a collection of poems about Terry Sawchuk, all-star NHL goalie from 1949 to his death in 1970, written by Randall Maggs.

>"In compact, conversational poems that build into a narrative long poem, Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems follows the tragic trajectory of the life and work of Terry Sawchuk, dark driven genius of a goalie who survived twenty tough seasons in an era of inadequate upper-body equipment and no player representation. But no summary touches the searching intensity of Maggs’s poems. They range from meditations on ancient/modern heroism to dramatic capsules of actual games [...]"
posted by philfromhavelock at 3:17 PM on September 17, 2017

Two of the Sawchuk poems are available at the blog Copper and Blue.
posted by philfromhavelock at 3:47 PM on September 17, 2017

The diver by Robert Francis
https://books.google.com/books?id=vwIOCJGhlagC&pg=PA186&lpg=PA186&dq=the+diver+poem+flying+bird+to+fish&source=bl&ots=60wBMMT6Jk&sig=z50Z1q4kiwNHnzgOAay_In0J7qg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGpP3Fra3WAhVR92MKHUjSA9wQ6AEIOTAO
posted by mattholomew at 4:21 PM on September 17, 2017

The Night Game, Robert Pinsky
posted by Snarl Furillo at 4:49 PM on September 17, 2017

It was somewhere up the country, in a land of rock and scrub,
That they formed an institution called the Geebung Polo Club.

posted by zamboni at 5:48 PM on September 17, 2017

Yusef Komunyakaa, Slam, Dunk & Hook https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50245/slam-dunk-hook
posted by JuliaJellicoe at 7:34 PM on September 17, 2017

Ex-Basketball Player, John Updike.
posted by lobstah at 7:40 PM on September 17, 2017

Claudia Rankine's book Citizen has a lot of material about Serena Williams.
posted by escabeche at 9:26 PM on September 17, 2017

Alumnus Football by Grantland Rice
posted by SemiSalt at 6:27 AM on September 18, 2017

Alumnus Football by Grantland Rice

A text version can be found here, in the comments. Its final stanza:

"Keep coming back, and though the world may romp across your spine,
Let every game’s end find you still upon the battling line;
For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost – but how you played the Game."
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:50 AM on September 18, 2017