Alan Michael Parker’s “I Have Been Given a Baseball…” catches the nostalgia, the good time feelings of an old baseball park that has seen a lot of games, both good ones and bad ones. But the poem’s techniques are too much on display to make this a successful poem.

Like so many other poems, this one begins with an object, one that conjures up memories and musings. The speaker just happens to have been given a novelty baseball, and it just happens to be “complete with the violet / No. 7 line… out to Shea.”

Ah yes, the Mets… “Lovable losers” in their first decade; Miracle Mets in ‘69 when they beat MY Baltimore Orioles in the World Series; and then in the 1970s, again foundering as deaths and mismanagement brought the team down again. It’s kind of hard to discover in this poem what the speaker found so endearing about “too often” watching the Mets lose – in the rain. I guess the speaker was a fan, but the poem doesn’t really convey his own joy. I do, however, like his image of the die-hard fans protecting themselves from the rain under “the occasional grocery bag” – although a newspaper does as well. (Personally, I think it’s more likely that someone would carry a newspaper to a game than a grocery bag, but maybe “grocery bag” is more poetic…..)

Parker’s obvious technique is on display again in the fourth stanza, where the baseball given the speaker now reminds him of a woman he knows now “whose son has died.” But instead of focusing on the woman who “should have the ball,” Parker digresses to talk about the son. What an awkward way to get from the speaker’s own memories to a comment about the stadium making the son “happy there, at last.” I do like the outrageous suggestion that her son would be happy “in the buggy, humid night” – fans are nutty that way – but the next line leaves me cold. It’s one thing to use a specific metaphor to concretize an abstraction (Happiness is a warm puppy), but here Parker uses an abstraction as a simile for another abstraction – Sitting in Shea Stadium on a buggy, humid night is “like being inside a pretty thought.” Yeah, right.

It’s all downhill from there on, as Parker races to cram in all his ideas before the poem ends. The small, sodden crowd that chants Let’s Go Mets -- is that the crowd with the dead son or the 1970s crowd the speaker remembers? Are they angels because the son is in heaven—I don’t think so, but then I don’t know why or how Parker wants us to consider that. And now we know why Parker didn’t mention the mother in the 6th and 7th stanzas – he was saving her for his final pitch in the last stanza. But the last line – “whatever we do with anything” – is just as maddeningly abstract as “like being inside a pretty thought.” What are we to do with this poem? –

Whatever [we] want,
whatever we do with anything.

And what I want is a poem with less technique on display and more effective imagery to convey Parker’s ideas.

Agreed, but I disagree on technique. I don't think this poem even suceeds there: it's blase and prosaic. As I said, so blah it falls the peanut-butter (litmus, if you will) test for poetry: it does not stick to the roof of my mouth. Tomorrow I'll have forgotten I ever read it.

This poem reads like a pitching change: everybody runs to the pisser.

Cutter

i promised myself that if i understood the poem well enough to comment on it, i would make my critique before reading anyone else's.

that's just what i did.

i have such a different take on this poem. and such a different designation on the success/ failure chart.

so sorry you all are disappointed with this one. it has been an uncommon experience to enjoy two tuesday pics in a row!

w n c

It failed the "Peanut Butter" test with me as well. Simply too blase and lacking in any real "content" for my taste.

d;-)

MaryAnn..

I think you brought more about baseball to this poem than Parker did. ..The grocery bag, a clumsy description..would be for people who bring their own eats to the game, cheaper than buying snacks/food when at the game or to supplement the hot dogs..

Your critique shows Parker;s generalities up in high relief, let me say..his generics. We agree on the overall letdown this poem delivered..

Whatever coulda, shoulda been there..just wasn't.

A

I like baseball and peanut butter, preferably chunky. I am bored by this poem and the discussion of it, which goes on and on, about a piece which lacks spirit or a sense of its subject. Lots of talk here about a piece of little interest. Sorry.