58. Sportgedicht

Every year we offer our listeners quasi-poetic takes on football. In fact, Super Bowl Haiku has become one of the most popular segments on Only A Game. Here’s Bill Littlefield’s all-time favorite:

Silly coach … screaming.
You change nothing. The call stands.
But your heart explodes.

But the connection between sports and poetry runs much deeper than our silly attempts at haiku. To discuss the ties, former United States Poet Laureate — and long-time friend of Only A Game — Robert Pinsky joined Bill Littlefield on stage at the Somerville Theatre in Somerville, Mass. for the OAG 20th Anniversary Live Show.

BL: Have you a sports-related poem to share with us?

RP: I have two super-short poems, and they do the two things we tend to do in writing about sports, which is laugh and cry. This first one is one of the oldest poems ever in the whole Western culture. It’s from the Greek anthologies. It’s an epitaph – ”On Apis the Prize Fighter.”

To Apis the boxer

His grateful opponents have erected
This statue
Honoring him
Who never by any chance hurt one of them.

/ Only a game