Line Drives 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems Edited by Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles Foreword by Elinor Nauen March 2002 paper, 0-8093-2440-7, $16.00t cloth, 0-8093-2439-3, $40.00s 208 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 Baseball / Poetry Writing Baseball Richard Peterson, series editor   “Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems deserves a Hall of Fame nomination for the sheer number and variety of poems it anthologizes for the first time. The strongest praise, however, goes to the quality of the collection. These are fine poems by writers at the top of their game, and the editors’ introduction is both wise and heartfelt. A grand slam!” —Don Johnson, editor of Hummers, Knucklers, and Slow Curves: Contemporary Baseball Poems            “We wait for baseball all winter long,” Bill Littlefield wrote in Boston Magazine a decade ago, “or rather, we remember it and anticipate it at the same time. We re-create what we have known and we imagine what we are going to do next. Maybe that’s what poets do, too.”   Poetry and baseball are occasions for well-put passion and expressive pondering, and just as passionate attention transforms the prose of everyday life into poetry, it also transforms this game we write about, play, or watch. Editors Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles unite their own passion for baseball and poetry in this collection, Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems, providing a forum for ninety-two poets. Line after line, like baseball itself game after game and season after season, these poems manage to make the old and the familiar new and surprising. The poems in these pages invite interrogation, and the reader—like the true baseball fan—must be willing to play the game, for these poems are fun, fresh, angry, nostalgic, meditative, and meant to be read aloud. They are keen on taking us deeply into baseball as sport and intent on offering countless metaphors for exploring history, religion, love, family, and self-identity. Each poem delivers images of pure beauty as the poets speak of murder and ghost runners and old ball gloves, of baseball as a tie that binds families—and indeed the nation—together, of the game as a stage upon which no-nonsense grit and skill are routinely displayed, and of the delight experienced in being one amid a mindlessly happy crowd. This book is true to the game’s long season and to the lives of those the game engages.   Brooke Horvath is a professor of English at Kent State University and the author of two collections of poetry—In a Neighborhood of Dying Light and Consolation at Ground Zero. He has served as a book review editor for Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature.    Tim Wiles is the director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. His baseball writings include a column, “Letters in the Dirt,” in the Cooperstown Freeman’s Journal and poems in Elysian Fields Quarterly and Fan.     The Line-Up Caron Andregg   David Baker                                      Joseph Bathanti Richard Behm                                       Michael Blumenthal                                Earl S. Braggs                                       Richard Brautigan                                  Charles Bukowski                                  David Citino                                          Robert Collins                                       Tony Cosier                                          Philip Dacey                                         Jim Daniels                                           Joseph  Duemer   Kathryn Dunn                                                   Keith Eisner                                          David Feela                                          Beth Ann Fennelly                                    Rina Ferrarelli                                       Rebecca J. Finch                            Gary Fincke                                          Robert Gibb                                          Laurence Goldstein                                   Joseph Green                                        Linda Gregerson                                 Louise Grieco                                        Paul R. Haenel                          Katherine Harer                           Michael S. Harper                          Mary Kennan Herbert                         William Heyen                          Conrad Hilberry                                    Mikhail Horowitz                                   Andrew Hudgins                                    Constantine von Hoffman David Jauss                                              Michelle Jones                          Karen Kevorkian                                 Lindsay Knowlton                                  Yusef Komunyakaa                             Norbert Krapf                                       Donna J. Gelagotis Lee                Joel Lewis                                            M. L. Liebler                                        George Looney Thomas Michael McDade           Walt McDonald Robert McDowell Paul Marion                                          Ed Markowski                                       Ron McFarland Michael McFee                                                             Wesley McNair Jay Meek Peter Meinke Bill Meissner     Mark J. Mitchell Elinor Nauen J. Caitlin Oakes Gailmarie Pahmeier Craig Paulenich Carol J. Pierman John C. Pine Wyatt Prunty Dan Quisenberry Maj Ragain Dale Ritterbusch Jay Rogoff Edwin Romond Virginia Schaefer Mark W. Schraf Red Shuttleworth Joyce Sidman Floyd Skloot Joseph A. Soldati Joseph Stanton David Starkey Sheryl St. Germain Rodney Torreson Quincy Troupe Ron Vazzano Doyle Wesley Walls David C. Ward Edward R. Ward Michael Waters David Watts Kyle Lee Williams Hannah Wilson Jeff Worley Baron Wormser Karen Zaborowski Larry Zirlin

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