The University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 33, No. 12, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 26, 2003 Page: 4 of 12
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November 26, 2003 The University News
Sports
Poets take the gridiron for one more game
"In order to describe a fire
burning or a tree in a field, let us
stand in front of that fire and that
tree until they no longer look to
us like any other fire or any other
tree." (Gustave Flaubert)
Upon finishing Madame
Bovary last semester, I thought I
would never read another scrap
of Flaubert again. And now I
stumble upon this quote and
realize that it is with Flaubertian
eyes that I have been writing my
sports column this entire
semester.
I have been staring at the sport
of football for years; only lately
have I seen the rough gleam of
poetry hidden beneath its even
rougher surface. But I've had a
hunch it was there for a long
time.
I felt it in those neighborhood
games at the park, games that my
friends and I never wanted to
end. The hours we'd counted,
halved, quartered, and eighthed
in the classroom meant nothing
on that field. We would play
until after the sun had set, until
we could not even see the
football.
I felt it on bus rides to the
games, rides silent as death, and
serious as the grim lines that
were my teammates' mouths. I
felt it on the field after my last
game, sitting on the field and
crying.
I felt it all those times but I
couldn't describe the feeling.
And then I read a poem last
fall and found a few words. They
weren't, mine but Homer's.
When I read Achilles' words
spoken to Priam: "Your son is
given back to you, aged sir, as
you asked it" (24.599), I felt in
that unexpected clemency some
of the thrill I felt in the best of
games.
Watching the Cowboys this
season has given me that thrill
again.
I'd like to think that I've
always watched football closely.
However, faced with the task of
actually having to write about it,
I realized I could have been
watching the games a good bit
more closely, with a good bit
more care.
I've tried to take some care in
writing this column.
A few issues ago I mentioned
Texas' fanatical devotion to high
school football and asserted that
this devotion is, in essence, an
epical one, that it is a devotion
akin to the fervor Derek Walcott
and Patrick Kavanagh employ in
their art.
But, the question might easily
have been asked me, is this
devotion to high school football
a healthy one?
Regarding three hour
practices, nightly film sessions,
and physically abusive coaches,
I can only say these
things are physically,
mentally, and
spiritually unhealthy
for a young man.
I concede these
things are a part of the ffm
sport just as I concede
that power-hungry
bishops and pedophile priests are
a part of the Catholic Church.
But, just as I do not renounce my
faith because of bad priests and
bishops, bad coaches and stress
will not make me denounce high
school football.
The simple fact is that you
could strip away the film
sessions, practices, and abusive
coaches, and fans would still turn
out by the thousands to watch the
kids play. This is for the simple
reason that Americans (Texans
especially) love watching
football. They love watching it
in the same way Homer loved
telling stories and scholars love
reading them.
This wild love of football
seems an unhealthy thing.
Football is certainly not a sport
Plato or Aristotle would have
encouraged of their students.
The game gets its appeal from
collisions, its artistry from
avoidance of those collisions.
Like poetry, it is a game of
A Different Breed
o' Sports
Zach Czaia
things I've been obsessing over
the past two months. With
instant replay, one is given a
treasure chest of details. The
little things that pass you by in
the rush of the moment are made
clear in retrospect.
Instant replay plants the
action in one's head, frame by
frame, so it can be dwelled upon
in silence, as I have dwelled with
the Cowboys these past months.
It gives different angles and
perspectives to the action, giving
flesh to the x and o bones of the
play.
It makes the most ordinary
football play a wild and
breakneck event, with camera-
zoom-ins so close you can see
the breath fog up in the winter
and the quarterback cringe in
pain.
In this way, instant replay is
very much like reading a poem.
A good reader of a poem does
not "speed-read.*' He does not
race through lines. He lingers in
m
i
game and never
before have I realized
how much about the
game I have not even
begun to understand.
I've examined,
superficially, only
one or two positions
on the football field.
But there are 22 players in
each play, 11 to a side. I've
stared so hard, I now see the
quarterback as a strange bardic
vision in my eyes, the coach a
Virgillian guide. But on this field
there are seven times 70 more
visions I have not yet seen.
And there are visions for me
to see beyond the field.
I wish I could see them all,
that for one day they would seem
to me as strange as they really
are.
But after I've made them
strange, what then?
Many poets would say I must
make a choice. What choice?
William Butler Yeats explained
it in the first stanza of his poem.
The Choice:
"The intellect of man is forced
to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the
work,
And if the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging
in the dark."
Texas
Stadium:
danger.
One could argue that a sport
like soccer employs Aristotle's
mean or Plato's sense of balance,
with its fluid, unbroken sort of
play, with its big plays and
mistakes blending together and
losing themselves amongst each
other.
But one could not argue this
for football, where each play is
a separate event in itself, with
limitations, with a specific form.
In each play, one can find easily
distinguished heroes and easily
distinguished goats.
No, I don't think Plato would
approve of these concentrated
bursts of heroism, these hurtling
young bodies. But Homer based
The Iliad on similar bursts and
hurtlings. It is in these things
where his characters' virtues
(martial and otherwise) are
defined.
Instant replay is one window
into the room containing the
football virtues. It is the device
that allows a man to see the
verbal spaces, delights in word-
play, reads and re-reads
passages. If he is a faithful
reader of a good poet, he does
what a good replay does: he
gives "different angles and
perspectives to the action" of the
poem and "flesh to the bones" of
the words.
But the metaphor can only
take us so far. For a good reader
of poetry is not a camera; he does
more than catalog and present his
perspectives in the form of
highlights and replays.
A good reader of poetry not
only notices the details of the
poem but internalizes its
revelations—wonders over
them, even—so that he might
change his life.
For three months I have
watched football with these eyes.
Detailed eyes. Eyes that linger
and delight in the most "basic"
plays.
Never before have I taken so
much joy in such a simple
pleasure as watching a football
Site of
poetry
and
danger,
(Ronald
Newhouse/
Dallas.net)
To paraphrase: for Yeats, a
poet's work, his "making
strange" (a Heaney phrase), is a
work that, by its very nature,
prevents one from perfecting his
life.
But what does W.B. make of
Christ's command in Matthew 5,
to "be perfect, as your Father in
heaven is perfect"? Do poets get
a special exemption from this
command?
I always assumed that my
"making strange" of football
would, in some way or other,
lead me to Christ. All good
things come from God, I
reasoned. I have known since I
was boy that football was good,
so, eventually, I figured I would
be led to the ultimate creator of
that good.
But those Yeats lines caught
me off-guard. Like a batter who
steps out of the box after being
brushed back from the plate by
an unexpected pitch, I stepped
back from my football parallel.
Was God really at the end of that
line? Yeats sure wouldn't have
expect him.
It wasn't just Yeats. I found
the sentiments echoed by
another one of my favorite Irish
bards, Patrick Kavanagh:
"...the Gospel was printed
over an older writing / and its
damnation was crawling under
the Host."
Both Kavanagh and Yeats felt
themselves to be prophets to the
people, vatic poets. Whether
they appointed themselves or not
is a question up to debate. That
they filled that position--as
propet-poets-with considerable
craft and technique is
indisputable.
All that talk of prophets led
me back to where I'd begun. In
Matthew 5. I read the chapter
again and found Jesus employing
a method familiar to my eyes.
In the first verses, he speaks
of virtues that his followers
ought to strive for.
Each one of the virtues is
common, looked-over, but the
reward Christ gives for them
does not seem to correlate with
the virtue.
"Blessed are the meek," He
says, "for they shall inherit the
earth."
Not only are the virtues made
strange, but the Decalogue, the
big 10, the cherished set of
commandments are looked at in
a way that must have set Jesus'
crowd scratching their heads
(perhaps in much the same way
I scratched my head after reading
the first book of Orneros or
Paradise Lost).
"If your right eye is causing
you to sin," he said, "Pluck it
out" (5:29).
These sayings have been
repeated so many times, the
hearer probably stops listening to
the words now. But the words
are radical and demand to be read
like a poem. Again and again
and again.
The language Christ used was
a terse sort of poetry in itself.
Externally, it was a renovation
and rejuvenation of the particular
words he used. But more than
that it was a renovation of a
moral law, of human beings and
consciences. Prophetic? Yes.
And perhaps something more.
Yeats was a renovator of the
English language, surely. But I
cannot agree with him when he
says I must choose between
perfection of the life and the
work.
I find another choice in
Matthew:
"The highway to hell is broad
and its gate is wide,"
and
"You can enter God's
kingdom through the narrow
gate*' (7:13-14)
Both the highway and narrow
road are filled with poetry.
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Kuckelman, Meghan. The University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 33, No. 12, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 26, 2003, newspaper, November 26, 2003; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth201575/m1/4/: accessed May 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Dallas.