Sports Desk [by Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

I am writing this post from North Carolina, after walking the farm and talking of heavy machinery with my friend Aaron and his girlfriend Ashley. We do this at the end of every residency at Warren Wilson, where I teach. We put down our books and walk to the fields. I often hear my voice as I’m talking and realize it is different, closer to the way the voices sounded where I grew up as opposed to the cities I’ve lived in so long and now call my home. Aaron is a farmer and every walk is a lesson. He’s taught me about hoop houses and horses and once we almost found the mushroom farm we were looking for. Today he looked steadily at me and said, “Today we’re going to look at heavy machinery.” And then he said, “You’re going to like this. Every piece has a story.” 

At first we looked at older and larger machines. There was a grader being used like a sculpture. It was made in Indianapolis and even Aaron had to think for some time about what it might do in the fields. He figured it out and we all walked around it and touched the gears that don’t get used anymore. We walked to one barn and looked at the combine and I thought of Larkin, which says something about where I came from and where I am now. And then the tractors! John Deere. Have you ever been in a John Deere store? It’s beautiful. We had one in Middletown and when we went I’d sometimes take the toy tractor I had. I can’t explain the greens and the yellows in that place.  What they did to me: It was like being in a church. Or a barn full of dinosaurs. It was quiet in the store and we’d go there to get parts. Never a new tractor. Once you had one you’d never need another. I think Aaron said his is from the 70’s.

 We stood by the tractors and started to talk. Had I grown up on a farm? No. But there were farms all around and we’d drive past them and the kids I went to school with worked and lived on them. Ashley said her mom had grown up not far from me and we talked about tobacco, the rows of drying barns all along the Connecticut River. I remember. All the older kids leaving school to pick and how the nets lined the road. How tobacco in Connecticut meant the only Jai alai outside of Miami because all those guys would come up to pick. That was how sports came into my life. You lived in a small town. You farmed or you worked in a blue-collar job. If you wanted to get out you played sports or you marched in the band. And if you stayed in town you played sports too and talked about it for the rest of your life.

How did it begin for me? Loving sports? I certainly couldn’t play. With my eyes and my bad balance catching anything was a ridiculous and often risky proposition. But I loved them. I loved the sounds of the games. I loved watching the older kids on the bus carrying their gear.  I liked the crowd cheering on the television and the Cokes my father would drink from green glass bottles as he watched.  And though I love boxing and baseball the first sport I remember loving was football. I liked watching with him even when I didn’t understand what was going on. At some point I got a football helmet and I’d put it on and run around my grandparents’ dining room table with  “I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends” playing. Where’s the instant replay of that?

 I think it really began with Mister Rogers. Lynn Swann went on Mister Rogers and talked about doing ballet. And he danced. I was smitten:

 

And of course, Mean Joe Green had the best name in the world and he was in my favorite commercial:

So, my love of sports began with stories and farms and desolate towns. Not so different from the poems I’d write later on.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be reporting from the sidelines about the NFL Playoffs. And then we’ll get to the Super Bowl. And then if I haven’t worn out my welcome we’ll talk boxing. And of course, that will lead me to poems and to memories and making the muscle more flexible and stronger. And it will lead to questions. Why might a poet need to write such a thing? And why might other poets choose to read it? What does sports offer us? And how come every time I watch men and women run and catch and fight and win and lose do I want to go back to my desk and start writing? Why do I sometimes feel like the Baltimore Orioles or the Green Bay Packers get me to my desk in as meaningful way as the poets I’m reading?

And before we know it, spring training will be here. And I just might come talk to you from Camden Yards about a good Greek boy who is beloved in Baltimore.

Speaking of Baltimore. Their Ravens dispatched New England in remarkable fashion. Not that I saw it. I was teaching a workshop. In fact, I taught all through the games yesterday, running outside with my Blackberry, checking the scores. This means this first post isn’t as much about the games as the rest will be. Though, that’s fine. Consider this an introduction.  An opening of the field, if you will. Game On.