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Analysis of Baseball

By May Swenson

It’s about                    Ball fits
the ball,                      mitt, but
the bat,                       not all                 
and the mitt.             the time.
Ball hits                      Sometimes
bat, or it                     ball gets hit
hits mitt.                    (pow) when bat
Bat doesn’t                meets it,
hit ball,                       and sails
bat meets it.              to a place
Ball bounces             where mitt
off bat, flies               has to quit
air, or thuds              in disgrace.
ground (dud)            That’s about
or it                             the bases
fits mitt.                     loaded,
                                     about 40,000
Bat waits                    fans exploded.
for ball
to mate.                     It’s about
Ball hates                  the ball,
to take bat’s              the bat,
bait. Ball                    the mitt,
flirts, bat’s                 the bases
late, don’t                   and the fans.
keep the date.           It’s done
Ball goes in                on a diamond,
(thwack) to mitt,      and for fun.
and goes out              It’s about
(thwack) back           home, and it’s
to mitt.                       about run.

May Swenson, “Analysis of Baseball” from New and Selected Things Taking Place (Boston: Atlantic/Little Brown, 1978). Copyright © 1978 by May Swenson. Reprinted with the permission of The Literary Estate of May Swenson.

Poet Bio

Ranked by Harold Bloom as one of the twentieth century’s three best women poets, May Swenson was born in Logan, Utah, but spent most of her adult life in New York City. Active as an editor, teacher and critic, she also translated Swedish poetry and wrote many poems for children. Her particular gift was for close observation and sensuous, imagistic description of the physical world. From 1980 to 1989 she acted as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

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A Desert Memory

By Bertrand N. O. Walker

Lonely, open, vast and free,
The dark'ning desert lies;
The wind sweeps o'er it fiercely,
And the yellow sand flies.
The tortuous trail is hidden,
Ere the sand-storm has passed
With all its wild, mad shriekings,
Borne shrilly on its blast.

 

Are they fiends or are they demons
That wail weirdly as they go,
Those hoarse and dismal cadences,
From out their depths of woe?
Will they linger and enfold
The lone trav'ler in their spell,

 

Weave ‘round him incantations,
Brewed and bro't forth from their hell?
Bewilder him and turn him
From the rugged, hidden trail,
Make him wander far and falter,
And trembling quail
At the desert and the loneliness
So fearful and so grim,
That to his fervid fancy,
Wraps in darkness only him?

 

The wind has spent its fierce wild wail,
         The dark storm-pall has shifted,
Forth on his sight the stars gleam pale
         In the purpling haze uplifted.

 

And down the steep trail, as he lists,
         He hears soft music stealing;
It trembling falls through filmy mists,
         From rock-walls faint echoes pealing.

 

Whence comes this mystic night-song
With its rhythm wild and free,
With is pleading and entreaty
Pouring forth upon the sea
Of darkness, vast and silent,
Like a tiny ray of hope
That oft-times comes to comfort
When in sorrow's depths we grope?

 

'Tis the An-gu, the Kat-ci-na,
'Tis the Hopi's song of prayer,

 

That in darkness wards off danger,
When 'tis breathed in the air;
Over desert, butte, and mesa,
It is borne out on the night,
Dispelling fear and danger,
Driving evil swift a-flight.

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