Kevin Varrone, Box Score : An Autobiography
errors are part of the game my dad used to say to remain sub-stance in the face of transubstantiality is pretty much what hittingthe eephusis all about : some things cannot be explained by timeor continuance or we select our documents to tell our stories Imean the city the gulls the green & way people quiero & millbetween innings mr sutcliffe the stairway from bluff tohollow remains one of the most fascinating dreams one couldhave is of all this broad fenland as a great city playground wrote avisitor to the neck in the late 1800’s : light a derivative miraclecomes on howard got the bat head out & hit that one a country milethere there now hush hush swing low there’s nothing but give &damn & bring me home & carry me home
Philadelphia poet Kevin Varrone’s Box Score : An Autobiography (Furniture Books, 2014) is an extended exploration into the game of baseball, from its history to folk tales to its overall structure, held together through the author’s long-standing relationship to the game. Through telling the tales of America’s Greatest Sport, it allows Varrone to delve into elements of storytelling from his own past merged with long-forgotten elements of baseball trivia, mixed and re-mixed, interspersed amid prose-poems constructed with a series of pauses held together with staccato precision. At the same time, Varrone is utilizing the information of baseball to create an extended sequence of stand-alone episodes of text, being both his own autobiography and a biography of the sport. Through the stand-alone sections, lines and sentences repeat, recur and are re-ordered for the sake of repurposing meaning, connecting fragments and even confounding any suggestion of narrative.
As well, this text exists as almost a transcription of how the book was originally purposed: as an interactive app, allowing for visuals as well as audio from a number of poets across North America, each reading a poem from Varrone’s manuscript. The poems in Box Score : An Autobiography condense and erase time; each section occurs simultaneously, with a review of the app version suggesting that the order in which we read these sections should be seen as fluid, something the nature of literary print publishing tends to reduce down to the suggestion of a single option. What does the lack of interactivity lose us, and what might we, also, gain?
henry chadwick’s headstone in brooklyn’s green-wood cemeteryreads father of baseball before the ’46 all star game ted williamsasked rip sewall if he would throw tht blooper nl manager charliegrimm put sewall in & sd throw that blooper pitch & see if youcan wake up this crowd sewell who’d been injured in a huntingaccident the day japanese bombed pearl harbor faced williamsfor a three-run homer (a deluxe version of the pitch sewell calleda sunday super dooper blooper) it was the only home run sewellever gave up on an eephus in 300-plus big league appearances &he’d told williams it was coming again & images showed williamshad run up out of the batter’s box & was therefore an enjamb-ment in violation of 6.03 of the official rules of baseballwhich states : a batter’s legal position shall be with both feetinside the batter’s box
Philadelphia poet Kevin Varrone’s Box Score : An Autobiography (Furniture Books, 2014) is an extended exploration into the game of baseball, from its history to folk tales to its overall structure, held together through the author’s long-standing relationship to the game. Through telling the tales of America’s Greatest Sport, it allows Varrone to delve into elements of storytelling from his own past merged with long-forgotten elements of baseball trivia, mixed and re-mixed, interspersed amid prose-poems constructed with a series of pauses held together with staccato precision. At the same time, Varrone is utilizing the information of baseball to create an extended sequence of stand-alone episodes of text, being both his own autobiography and a biography of the sport. Through the stand-alone sections, lines and sentences repeat, recur and are re-ordered for the sake of repurposing meaning, connecting fragments and even confounding any suggestion of narrative.
As well, this text exists as almost a transcription of how the book was originally purposed: as an interactive app, allowing for visuals as well as audio from a number of poets across North America, each reading a poem from Varrone’s manuscript. The poems in Box Score : An Autobiography condense and erase time; each section occurs simultaneously, with a review of the app version suggesting that the order in which we read these sections should be seen as fluid, something the nature of literary print publishing tends to reduce down to the suggestion of a single option. What does the lack of interactivity lose us, and what might we, also, gain?henry chadwick’s headstone in brooklyn’s green-wood cemeteryreads father of baseball before the ’46 all star game ted williamsasked rip sewall if he would throw tht blooper nl manager charliegrimm put sewall in & sd throw that blooper pitch & see if youcan wake up this crowd sewell who’d been injured in a huntingaccident the day japanese bombed pearl harbor faced williamsfor a three-run homer (a deluxe version of the pitch sewell calleda sunday super dooper blooper) it was the only home run sewellever gave up on an eephus in 300-plus big league appearances &he’d told williams it was coming again & images showed williamshad run up out of the batter’s box & was therefore an enjamb-ment in violation of 6.03 of the official rules of baseballwhich states : a batter’s legal position shall be with both feetinside the batter’s box
No comments have been added yet.
