The Iowa Review
Volume 17
Issue 3 Fall
1987
Baseball and Writing
Nancy Knutson
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Knutson, Nancy. "Baseball and Writing." The Iowa Review 17.3 (1987): 164-166. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol17/iss3/46
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Article 46
Nancy Knutson
Baseball andWriting
Fanaticism?No. Writing
baseball is likewriting.1
is exciting and
Marianne Moore loved baseball. The Brooklyn Dodgers were her favorite
are
and athletes, she wrote:
"They
of it, are they not? minding
their own busi
ness.
hornbills,
catchers, do not pry or prey?or
pro
Pangolins,
pitchers,
us
not
look their best when
do
make
self-conscious;
long the conversation;
... I don't know how to account for a
person who could be
caring least.
team. To
explain her interest
art and
for
subjects
exemplars
to miracles
indifferent
in animals
of dexterity,
a certain
feat by Don
Zimmer?a
Dodger at the time?making abackhand catch, of a ball coming hard from
behind on the left, fast enough to take his hand off."2
Moore admired the skill and accuracy displayed by the ball players. The
third base?always
base, pitcher,
positions ?first
"precision"
intrigued
as
role of the catcher. Her favorite players were
did the commanding
her,
third baseman,
Clete Boyer,
the Yankee
and two quarterbacking
catchers,
Yankee
Elston Howard
after Howard
alligator
like to watch
isWillie
and Dodger Roy Campanella.
She named her pet
because it was a very flexible animal. "The batter I
effect of know
Mays. Vim marks every action?an
it takes, without
ing he has what
being conceited. Responsibility
a moral
to it."3
ent; calling it enough. There's
then. Today
She admired the players' humility, more prevalent
are number
many
"we
ping
instead
of a mere
and tal
we
see
one" fingers in the air and "high-five"
hand slap
as
move
at
handshake
level
passing
hip
players
through the game. She likely would disapprove of players advertising
and enjoying tremendous celebrity status. Marianne Moore down
own use of form. She referred to her poems as "prosaic
things"
played her
and said they were called poetry because there is no other category inwhich
products
to put them.
a defensive
is basically
Baseball
game and, interestingly,
anne Moore's major themes
is defense
her work
throughout
for
survival.
abilities
disorder,
Her
animals
to survive whatever
not unlike
baseball
are "battle-dressed"
comes
players
and have
at them. Her
reacting
heroes make
swiftly
one of Mari
or self-defense
"magnificent"
order out of
to a hard-hit
ball.
164
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a poet of the eye,
to see
alertly positioned
things
at
to
strove
of
"a
her.
She
make
each
her
rock
poems
coming
crystal thing
to see"
clear
and
choice.
word
She cared
by using startling
images
precise
to control
how the poem looked on the page. Syllables gave her amethod
Marianne
Moore
was
each stanza look like the others. Marianne
lengths and make
didn't want each line to look alike. She would
vary the number of
one to twenty
in her lines, but each stanza would
be pat
syllables from
the
line
Moore
terned
monds
As
Once
after the first. These
stanzas
resemble
one another
as baseball
dia
across
the country do: close but not exact replicas of each other.
a spectator, Moore
to the action on the field.
paid close attention
she noted how a certain pitcher cupped his genitals at the end of each
in a little notebook
She wrote her impressions
that she carried with
pitch.
her. "One
of the handsomest
things
about
the game,
I think,
is accuracy
that looks automatic in fielding fast balls. I never tire of a speedyball from
the catcher finding the glove of the pitcher, when half the time he isn't
even
at it."4 The ball's trajectory seemed like magic
to her, a kind
looking
of magic
she often tried to imitate by leaping from one image to another,
from one phrase to another, without
the use of connectives.
is central to her form. Her quota
of quotations
Moore's
deployment
into what
tions are so completely
she is saying that where
integrated
they
came from doesn't matter.
are from books, government
Sometimes
they
or what
she
she
heard on the street. They can be
knew,
pamphlets,
people
verbatim, although usually not. She tended to play with
them and
to make
paraphrase
became
hers,
They
pense
of who
them fit. Like stealing bases, she would
steal quotes.
off them, but not at the ex
and she spring-boarded
said them first. At the end of her books are extensive notes
In her poem, "Baseball andWriting,"
these bits of language.
attributing
we are told at the outset that itwas
broadcasts."
"suggested
by post-game
in the poem, with
There are ten quotations
each stanza except the first
having
at least one.
is prominent
Rhyme
in "Baseball
and Writing"
and in Moore's
other
poems. All types of rhyme are found. She had a special fondness for un
accented
she felt promoted
naturalness.
She also used al
rhyme, which
In fact, one finds it is the consonant
sounds that tend to be
literation.
heard most
in reading her poems aloud. Inmany of her lists, it is the sound
to
them work and carries the reader through without
stopping
the necessity of each item. She loved the names of the ball
players
that makes
analyze
165
and rolled
them
wonderful
in her mouth.
She thought
Bend Mizelle"
"Vinegar
was
a
name.
. . ."5
a trap, a web.
is a tool; poetry is 'amaze,
"Prosody
see
a
to
how she could escape from the maze,
And
the
game for her,
a
Pee
of
Wee
all
the
finesse
like
Reese.
with
Baseball
web,
short-stop
in awarm,
of
of their own,
"the
live
spring,"
boys
playful world
players,
She wrote,
itwas
or time, than
more
so inMarianne Moore's
mind,
today. To her
perhaps
were "the real toads in
For Marianne Moore
the
imaginary gardens."
they
came
answers were me, yes when
to
it
baseball and writing:
"Who is ex
cited?
Might it be I?"
Notes
1.
Marianne
Moore,
The Complete
Poems
ofMarianne
Moore
(Macmillan
Publishing Company, 1981) p. 221.
2. Marianne Moore, A Marianne Moore Reader (Viking Press, 1961) p.
xvi.
3.
Part
4.
5.
166
Marianne
Moore,
"Ten Answers,
II," Harper's Magazine,
Ibid.,p.97.
Marianne Moore,
Vol.
A Marianne
229
Letter
from an October
(November
Moore
Reader,
Afternoon,
1964) p. 98.
p.xvii.