[Julie Steiner]

Watch Katelyn Ohashi's joyful, perfect-10 2019 gymnastics routine, then hear her recite her poem about body-shaming.

[Bill Carpenter]

Clive and Shaun,
Betjeman appears frequently on the "Real Poets Daily" account on Instagram, which has 4,319 followers. That's pretty good exposure to a self-selected audience.

[Julie Steiner]

Pssst, Derek! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's against the rules to post one's own work in Musing on Mastery threads.

[derek fenton]

Apologies, Julie. I didn't know that. Thanks for sending me to the sin bin where rule breakers in sport deserve to be!
Of course sports poetry got moved didn't it! It must be all those knocks to the head I received in rugby. We don't wear helmets or padding over here.
Dear oh dear!

[R. S. Gwynn]

A very controversial poem about race and sports.

https://poets.org/poem/change

[Jim Moonan]

.
.
Thanks for that one, Sam. Great poem by a great poet.
.
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[conny]

That tennis poem is dubious, to put it mildly. It's certainly
sincere in its ugliness but i think that once it goes awry
there's really no saving it.

[Martin Elster]

I’ve read that Hoagland poem before. It’s a great poem, definitely. And, Conny, where does it go awry? It's about change and changing attitudes, right? The theme is quite evident: innate tribalism giving way to a more morally just way of thinking about, and behaving toward, our fellow human beings. The seasons have changed (winter to spring), societal attitudes have changed, and the N and his friend have also changed. I love how he has variations on a theme: "change." (But I'm curious to know where you think the poem goes awry.)

[Julie Steiner]

Yes, at the end of the poem, N claims that "we" have changed. But nothing suggests that N thinks this "change" is for the better. If anything, the poem ends on a wistful, nostalgic note for the good old days, when his divine right as a White man to look down on Blacks and women went unchallenged.

N doesn't seem to have stopped sneering at his caricatured composite of Venus and Serena Williams (cornrowed "Vondella Aphrodite") despite the passage of time. He repeatedly signals that this ridiculous personage will only win his resentment, never his respect, even though she could (and presumably still can) kick the ass of his Eastern European favorite--whose perceived kinship with himself could not be more superficial and skin-deep, but which is still deeper than any kinship he can feel with his fellow American, who is too big and too black.

N even implicitly challenges the fact that these Black athletes are every bit as American as himself, when he does nothing to revise his flashback's portrayal of the Emancipation Proclamation as something forced down the throat of an unwilling Lincoln by Blacks. (Speaking of things forced upon unwilling people, shall we discuss the small matter of Whites having forced slavery on Blacks? No, no, let's not go there. Let's just hear a White guy vent about how insufferable it is for him to be forced to see Black women beat White women at tennis, while he is powerless to do anything except to mock their "outrageous" names and hairstyles.

I realize that the narrator is not necessarily the poet, but I'm really sick of older white men who unapologetically admit to still being racist and sexist assholes, and then seem to expect applause for having been so brave and honest as to admit it. And it's even more nauseating to me when they actually receive such applause.

[conny]

yep, what Julie said.

It goes awry at the point he says the white tennis player
is one of his tribe: and makes, by implication, the black tennis
player other, alien, unwelcome; for no other reason
than the colour of her skin. I mean, he's allowed to say that
obviously, but by saying so without any redeeming rhetorical
structure, he just sounds like a small minded asshole.


As Julie says, there is no complicated rhetorical exposition
after that. just a rather crude allusion to Lincoln and a resigned
collapse into what sounds like a psychological lament; that
the white world is changed, we presume, for the worse
because they, whoever they is, went to put the world back
where it belonged but can't, because the nasty, alien
black girl has put a spanner in the engine.

I mean, it's honest i guess, but repugnant.