The Iowa Review
Volume 35
Issue 3 Winter 2005-2006
2005
Playing Twenty-One with Mark Strand
Millie Mae Wicklund
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Recommended Citation
Wicklund, Millie Mae. "Playing Twenty-One with Mark Strand." The Iowa Review 35.3 (2005): 96-98. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol35/iss3/33
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Article 33
Playing Twenty-One with Mark Strand
it a
reading us a poem...was
or
a
Merrill
Meredith
one,
James
anyway, you read us the poem
You were
William
Poem ?
About
a guy in his 30s playing a pick-up
in the
game with teenagers
Basketball
or inadequate
tired of his marriage,
Twilight,
In it, or his wife_I
don't remember.
a rising, young poet, who competed
and again in lectures and Workshops
You were
Again
With other
60s poets. Peg Carlson, was she
The best, female poet in the Workshop
and
a
to
Not Catherine Davis, challenged
you
Pick-up game of 21, that ageless basketball
I thought of you telling us just before
Christmas
break, how you came into that
Cellar hotel bar where we met for your class,
Game.
You told us you had taken your '56
and white Ford to a gas station_
Green
How
Were
the gas station attendant guessing
from the University
asked what
You did. You replied you were
taught poetry and writing
And
you
a poet
and he
96
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your mind with a parting shot.
how big
"Oh, one of those_seeing
you are, I thought you were a football
Ruffled
player."
I got in on the pick-up game.
Anyway,
We played next to Peg's apartment on
A court of cement foul lines and correct
Boundaries.
After
While
you measured
shot
shot,
lay-ups, jump shots, easing
Them through the hoop like Bob Cousy,
I stayed the closest
Or Chet Walker,
With you, and Peg was last. Did we play
game or two? Yes, a couple on a
court. Then we played a
Sun washed
Scratch basketball
game after 21 and
One
You got all the rebounds, and neither
Peg nor Iwere in your league.
Were
the clouds milk white? Did our
Breaths
Names
Our
remain
empty
lives?
over that court? Did
our
lives out
our
leaving
Peg now, who cracked
are you,
semester? Where
no longer teach at Iowa? Did
Where's
Up
Who
second
The Workshop
go down the drain
When we left? Yes, we're poets
But other poets are there now in
Workshops.
97
We're
soft muscles
playing poet, and we're muscling
Our poetry through America. OH, Christ! We are
Aging and playing 21 to us now is as green as the
now.
Current poets in the Workshops
What
I remember
is this_we
were
on a bright
court and the sun was blinding_
a shot, Peg missed
a shot, Imissed
a
You missed
Shot?
Gimme the ball could be heard everywhere.
The sun streaking through my name ?
yellow, it
and
hit
the
the
court,
my back
stripes
Striped
Yellow
Now
98
and then, and now
and then.