The game in this poem is a stunt double for what it means to be a young man trying to find his place in this world while trouble is hanging around with a blackjack. The turn’s success is predicated on the reader first understanding how chaotic and beautiful the game is, even though it is “ll hands / & feet…sprung rhythm.” Once the action of the moment has been codified and the need of the moment has been verified, the last lines of the poem hit the game-winner:Īfter all, the poem isn’t really about the game of basketball, no matter how powerful and realistic the imagery might be. Komunyakaa heeds John Wooden’s often-quoted advice and is (poetically) quick, but he doesn’t hurry to get to the turn. Basketball becomes catharsis, enabler, and healer. As soon as the speaker says, “When Sonny Boy’s mama died,” the poem pivots from the physical to the hyperphysical. In his essay “Improvisation / Revision,” Komunyakaa says, “Poetry is an act of meditation and improvisation, and need is the motor that propels the words down the silent white space.” He could have replaced “poetry” with “basketball” and had a reasonable explanation of the game, as seen in “Slam, Dunk, & Hook.”īasketball is true to the “act of meditation and improvisation” from the outset in images like “we could almost / Last forever, poised in midair / Like storybook sea monsters.” The “need” isn’t contextualized until the poem’s turn, though.
#SWISH SWISH MEANING IN BASKETBALL FULL#
The similes approach the bucket from a different angle like reverse layups: “Dribble, drive to the inside, feint, / & glide like a sparrow hawk.” In other words, the poem is constructed like the game of basketball itself: tightly considered, open to improvisation, and full of sneakers and baggy shorts. The poem’s line breaks end in the same rhythmic satisfaction as fast breaks end. When the speaker says, “Nothing but a hot / Swish of strings like silk / Ten feet out,” the alliteration and assonance sound like a crossover dribble before a shot. Part of the poem’s success comes from basketball onomatopoeia. But for me, Komunyakaa’s combination of hard rhythm and visceral imagery drops the mic and walks off the page. Fairchild’s “Old Men Playing Basketball,” Major Jackson’s “Hoops,” and William Matthews’ “Foul Shots: A Clinic” all address the game with grace and consideration. There are other wonderful basketball poems out there with similar authenticity-B.H. Komunyakaa’s images are so arresting because they utilize some of the most apropos verbs for the kinetics of basketball: “corkscrew,” “dunk,” and “exploded.” The poem reads like it was written by a basketball player. What dropped the anvil: “We’d corkscrew / Up & dunk balls that exploded / The skullcap of hope & good / Intention.” The image took me back to Watkins Park in Indianapolis where I played ball in the daytime with my friends because it wasn’t safe to play at night. First I saw stars and planets, then the little canaries were singing circles around me. We read the poem in a class I didn’t skip, and even though I knew very little about poetry, the poem hit me like an anvil dropping in a cartoon. One of the first poems I had a real response to is Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Slam, Dunk, & Hook.” I read the poem not long after I’d graduated from riding the pine in high school to skipping class in order to play pickup ball in the Wildermuth Intramural Center at Indiana University.
Adrian Matejka’s “Yusef Komunyakaa and the Basketball of Poetics” Posted on January 8, 2013
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