Line Drives: 100 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 recreate what we have known and we imagine what we are going to do next. Maybe that's what poets do, too." 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. 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. 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.