sports – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Poetry in Motion: Jim Bouton, Mrs. Doubtfire, and the Athletics of Self-Awareness

March 21, 2013 No Comments

This is an essay about Ball Four, a tell-all memoir of Major and Minor League Baseball published in 1970 by author/major league knuckleballer Jim Bouton. More specifically it is about why pitchers are often enigmatic. Most specifically of all it is about Bouton’s pained desire – common among achievers – to be perfect by his own standards when he was already excellent by those of the universe at large. But first, let’s go crazy.

Columns, Poetry in Motion, Uncategorized

Poetry in Motion: Joe Brainard’s “I Remember” If It Was Entirely About Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

February 21, 2013 No Comments

In 1970, painter Joe Brainard crafted a highly unique memoir, beloved on arrival on his native Manhattan and beyond. It has become a cult classic, praised and imitated by the likes of Paul Auster, Kenneth Koch, and Georges Perec. Titled I Remember, Brainard’s book was a series of statements about his recalled life, all of which began with the phrase “I remember”. But what, I remember wondering, might Brainard’s book have looked like if each passage had been about famed […]

Poetry in Motion

Poetry in Motion: Letter from a Framingham Jail – An Imprisoned Patriots Fan Speaks Out

January 24, 2013 No Comments

(as told to Nick Curley, via exclusive interview.) FRAMINGHAM, MA – Watching the ’98 Honda Accord I torched outside the Cask ‘N Flagon go up in flames, I couldn’t help but see Tom Brady’s impeccable cheekbones among the whispering embers. The final seconds of Sunday’s American Football Conference Championship felt like getting pelted by ice chunks during elementary school games of King of the Mountain all over again. It’s funny how sometimes, in sports, fire is like ice.

Books

I’d rather read about the time Phil Jackson dropped acid

January 31, 2012 No Comments

Posted by Jason Diamond “Phil Jackson has sold a memoir, ELEVEN YEARS, of his time coaching the Lakers and the Bulls to various championships, to Penguin Press.” – Sarah Weinman, via Twitter.

Bites

Bites: Boxcar Kids, dirty pirates, Tom Waits, Moz in the third person, the Milkman talks, and more.

August 12, 2009 No Comments

Lesley Blume on NPR talks about The Boxcar Children, and other children books I might think of revisiting. Anton Corbijn is putting out a book on Tom Waits photos, fittingly titled Waits/Corbijn. “Five Pirate Books for the Perverted Reader” seems like an okay follow up to a bite on Tom Waits. Morrissey refers to himself in the third person, and hates EMI. In Venezuela, golf is a sport for bourgeois swine. In America, Tiger Woods still dominates. Tevye the Milkman […]