By Buzz
for Rich, September 23, 2009
Hoops
Pass the ball Kansas
bend it low
like wind
hoops wheat
twin soles thrash old grain
splash window see the floor
cold ash burns with pain
twist sap from maple core
pour-sugar-brown syrup down
cough up crack in tree
shinny-slick draw-and-kick
school those milk-fed feet
don’t bubbachuck that shot
jack-brick hoes shuck corn
shoot silk breeze smooth round knees
rim-blown dust bowl storm
plain people use the back-door
farmers sense the rain
screen spills from its spline
but still the spine remains
drive faded Chevy off the blocks
pick-and-roll crash paint
sweat cuts thick in thin socks
gnashed gears slash years change lanes
lace sneaks between hard lumber
post sets wing on high
stolen prayer banks on glass
no free throws paid in life
juke the movie cowboy
look inside for dimes
slip time’s string past tin ring
thread the needle through the pine
score your game in limestone
spin leather seam from rock
drop it soft as chalk Jayhawk
echoes dribble out our clock
Chevrolet, photo © 2009 by Linda Lupowitz. All
rights reserved.
Shoes Homework, drawing © 2009 by Max Lupowitz.
All rights reserved.
Buzz is a healer, husband, father, and friend, etching ethers in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley since 1979. He wrote this poem in the fall of 2009, as a birthday gift to his good friend and fellow basketball player Rich Jamison. Buzz had this to say about the poem: Rich asked me to write a poem for his birthday. The poem is about basketball, which we both share a love for. It’s about the pass, not the shot. While the shot carries the glory, the pass, or the assist (“dime”) gives the game its rhythm. So it’s also a metaphor for healing, where the practitioner assists, steps back in the shadows, and allows life to flow.
The pass gives the game it’s rhythm, and it also shows us how much heart the player has; how much he gives of himself. The practioner gives of himself. I could almost hear the notes along side these words, or did the words play the jazzy tune?
Nice music.
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This is the second poem of yours, Buzz, that I’ve seen, and both times I’m struck by the rhythm of the words. For example, these two lines, and how they have those hard k’s:
don’t bubbachuck that shot
jack-brick hoes shuck corn
Well, there are several places in the poem, and the poem as a whole, where there is this almost rap quality to it, but rap in a good way, in a way that clicks with the reader.
Another stanza that jumped at me:
plain people use the back-door
farmers sense the rain
screen spills from its spline
but still the spine remains
At the risk of making this comment awfully long, I did want to say that the words you added about the metaphor in the poem also resonated. It reminded me of when I gave birth to my first daughter. My midwife sat in a corner of the bedroom while I worked and worked at bringing my babe into this world. The midwife didn’t get up and walk over to me until I got stuck. She figured out what was wrong, suggested I visualize rings opening. Which I did, and boom, my water broke (I had thought it broke a lot earlier but was wrong).
Afterwards I was amazed by how I birthed my own baby with her assistance. What an empowering thought.
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Carmen, poetry comes from the heart. I can tell by your words that you are a poet as well. Thank you, Buzz
ybonesy, re: don’t bubbachuck that shot …
Rap is an integral part of basketball lore, a constant source of trash talk and repartee between Rich and I when we played. He used to call me ‘bubba’ too –
I’d have been remiss had I not piqued his humor. He laughed aloud when he read it.
re: plain people … Rich comes from a sect of Mennonites in north central Kansas called Plain people. They came west from Virginia and Ohio in conestogas through the “back door”, when Kansas was the frontier. The back-door is also a basketball play used in the half-court. They were farmers, Rich’s grandfather lived in a sod house he literally busted out of the ground.
re:…screen spills off its spline…A ‘screen’ is employed when running the back-door in b-ball.
re:… but still the spine remains… We may leave the place we are from, but we don’t often shake the roots that form the backbone of who we are. I’ve had some occaision to see the shape of Rich’s spine.
Hope you enjoyed the poem – thank you for the opportunity to share it with your community.
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Enjoyed reading the poem and how the language worked. Also nice to have some explanations of terms I’m not familiar with because I never played basketball and don’t watch it on television.
For the sake of people in my area who are basketball fans,
“Rock Chalk…Jayhawk…KU”
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Bob, thanks for the heads up on rock, chalk… The original buildings at KU were made from bricks cut out of a local type of limestone called chalk rock. That’s where the cheer came from. Also, a slang term for the ball is “rock”. As for the poem, the whole business is about basketball and designed for basketball hounds to pick up the scent of what it implies. Thanks for your input.
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I’ll be darned. Wouldn’t it be great to talk to every poet about these twists and turns in poetry?
Buzz, how did you become such a basketball hound?
Also wanted to say I keep going back to Max’s drawing the the sneakers. It draws you in. I love that it’s all graphite and no color.
Hey, as to the red Chevy, well, Linda, I got you a gift last night. I bought it from an artist friend who just put up an online store on Etsy. When I saw it, I knew I had to get it for you.
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yb – There are very few outlets for adults to actually play with each other, physically and mentally, and to be sure, basketball is a mental game. Like a chessboard where angles dictate your tactics, speed and brains will always defeat pure size.
A psychologist once told me he can tell more in 5 mins. about a person by playing basketball with them than he can in 2 years of analysis.. ie., is he selfish, does he play well with others, does he look up and see the play, is he meek, defensive, etc.
There’s no feeling that replaces the part of the game where you see the play before it happens and it unfolds before you while you’re in it. You almost feel like you are directing it, but you’re not, you’re just there as a witness.
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PS yb — Being a witness to the play is what you were describing earlier when writing about birthing. You were just there visualizing something and it happened around you. That is the “play.” When we see it happening we have a choice of surrender or looking away.
That rush of synchronicity takes place in sport because the kinetics of it stretch the mind through space. You can’t thread the needle if you are looking away.
*Also I think there’s some snow accumulating on the ball at the top.
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Ha, the snow…I wish it would accumulate here in the Rio Grande Valley!
Thanks for sharing Rich’s poem and your poem with us on red Ravine, Buzz. I did want to ask you one thing about writing. Do you write often? I’ve seen another poem you wrote, I think as an anniversary gift. Just curious about when and how you write. Hope you can shed light on that when you get a chance.
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Buzz, thanks so much for being our guest on red Ravine. I learned a lot about basketball from your comments, about the phrasing and rap talk. I played basketball a long, long time ago, once on a high school team. Later on a women’s rec team. These women were serious about their b-ball! Lots of trash talk. But I felt they were way to serious about winning. Sometimes it took the fun out of the game.
I think what you say is true, that you can learn a ton about a person by how he or she plays the game. Whatever game it is. What I love about your poem is that it’s about the pass, not the shot. About process rather than end goals. We write about process a lot on red Ravine. It really should be “it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game.”
I know that doesn’t happen anymore in sports. It’s a gazillion dollar business and many times not a good role model for kids. But there have to be some coaches out there who still believe it’s how you play the game!
I like the images you added to the poem as well. Especially the drawing of the shoes. It makes me want to see more drawings in our posts.
Do you write poetry on a regular basis? A friend of mine runs a poetry group that I’m part of that will be starting up again in January. It always makes me wish I wrote more poetry.
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yb – The first poem I ever wrote was the one you read last spring, also given as a birthday gift for my poet/wife. I wanted to tell her that I love her in a language she could hear and after all these years I’m still not certain that English is her first language. Also I did it as an exercise to get my writing skills up. Like everybody else, I think I have a book in me – but the problem is I can only type with one finger and so poetry turns out to be a heck of alot easier than writing a book because I’ll probably be a hundred years old before I finish it.
At any rate, I started to perceive things in verse form and have been writing regularly since. Most of it comes out extremely wry in the beginning, and in my opinion, very funny – then I go back over it, try to objectify it more, and turn it into a poem. I tend to keep the form tight which gives me a structure to work through, and I keep away from punctuation because I’m no good at it. I bounce everything off the house Muse who tells me when I’m going too far afield and then argue that if you can understand it, it’ll never appear in The New Yorker.
I’m a natural philosopher but not much of a reader so I write things out like I would say them. Maybe that’s what gives the words a certain rhythym. Poetry is working for me right now because each one started offers a new set of challenges that keep my curiosity going. I’m compulsive enough to stay with it until I’m satisfied with the outcome.
If I ever find the trigger on a second finger I just might take a shot at writing that book.
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Buzz, that’s so romantic — that the first poem you wrote was a birthday gift for your poet/wife. Speaking in her language, the language of poetry. I love that. And the idea of perceiving in verse form, a great point. That’s what happens to me in the haiku practice I do. It seems so natural.
Don’t let the one finger typing stop you from writing your book. I’ve read about quite a few famous authors who were hunt and peck typists. I also know authors who still write their books by hand. One is Natalie Goldberg who was a great part of the original inspiration for red Ravine. You could write the book longhand. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’d like to write a book on the typewriter. Liz bought me an old Royal. Perhaps I should start with writing an essay on it though. I’m so used to doing everything on the computer now and I like that the computer keeps up with my brain. Another part of me wants to slow down enough to write a book by hand or to type it on a typewriter. All food for thought!
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[…] that Bob was moved by the Anna Deavere Smith in our Writing Topic — 3 Questions. Our guest Buzz explained some of the nuances of basketball banter in his poetry post Hoops. ybonesy wrote about art as play, community art, something dear to our […]
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QM, even the guys who play for pay love the game. How it’s tricked out by the grey men at the top is the subject for another poem.
I’m cool with the keyboard even though it’s hunt and peck because I do so much editing. It may only be one finger, but it’s my finger and I’m stickin to it.
On the note of hunt and peck – I scratched on pointing out earlier that “shuck corn” was a veiled reference to the CornHuskers (U. of Nebraska), arch rivals of the Kansas Jayhawks.
Thank you, redRavine for inviting me into the gym.
As for Max’s drawing – Loved the shoes.
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Buzz, loved this bit: if you can understand it, it’ll never appear in The New Yorker. LOL. I wonder if that is one of their criteria. Can you imagine the editors sitting around a table…”Well this one is just a little too clear for my tastes…”
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