Losing Season - Jack Ridle - Walt Finch Poetry Collection

Jack Ridl is an American poet, who coached basketball at Westminster College and the University of Pittsburgh.  He won, in 2002, the Say-the-Word Poetry Award from The Ellipse Art Center in Arlington, Virginia.  In 2001 Chapbook Award from The Center for Book Arts in New York City. 

One of the most obvious subjects of this collection is basketball, and this can be applied to sports in general, which can be seen in almost every poem.  One theme is how when people are involved in a sport, that is all they think/care about.  This can be seen in several of the poems from the "First Quarter".  The poem, "The Coach's Daughter" is one example of this, showing how his whole family has become involved and basketball is all his life is about at the time.  But the game ends, and life moves on, and this can be seen in many of the poems in the "Fourth Quarter", and in particular the poem "All He Does".  The player will go to college and then get a job in this poem, but they also say how basketball will still be a part of him.  It is also shown in "Coach Reflects with His Wife on the End of the Season", when they are thinking about stopping with the team, and moving on in life.

The poem I am going to provide a close analysis of is "Scrub".

Last night at practice,
my man slipped by me
for a layup, and Coach
threw down his clipboard,
ran right up into my face,
slapped me behind the head,
and yelled, "What the hell
are you doing? Get in front.
Take a charge. You
on this team or not! How
are we gonna be ready if you
don't play tough defense?!"

Some mornings I wake up
wondering about tough defense,
and wind sprints, and running
up the bleachers twenty times.

Two hours every night
I'm on the other team.
I've heard it a thousand
times: "You're key to
this team. Without you
we'd never be ready." But
I know I do what you do
when you're never good enough.

Someday I'll come back
and point at that place on the bench.
Someday I'm gonna sit back,
watch TV, take a vacation
every summer, have a dog,
and never miss a game.

"You get in tonight?" my father asks
when I come in after the game.
I knock the snow from my boots.
"No." "Close game?" "No,
we lost by twenty-three." I
listen to the empty air, see
the slow shake of my father's
head, know he's been sitting
with a beer letting one sitcom
roll into the next, sneering at
the ads and laugh tracks, waiting
for the news, sports, and weather.
I go to the refrigerator, look at the line
of Budweiser cans, take out the milk,
pour a glass, go in with him
to watch the scores.

Sometimes, after practice,
I walk home slowly, and I
think about letting the ball
bounce away.  Then I'd
sit down, let my mind
open up wider and wider,
so wide the sky would
come inside, the stars
would light it all.

Last week, after school,
my kid sister said, "I'm
scared the sun will go out."

"That's ridiculous. Can't
happen," and I took her hand,
looked out the window, up
into the sky, watched
the snow clouds cross.
"But it's fire," she said.
"Fire goes out."

Four wind sprints to go.
"Let's see what you have left.
Run. Run like I'm after you.
Run. Run now, or after the next
game, I'll run you till you drop.
Run, goddamn it, run."

Once last summer I lay in bed
wondering if somewhere hidden
in my cells was something good
enough that I could do. But
the cells were mute. The days
since then have been the same,
even their names dissolving
like the Host upon my tongue.

There is no continuous meter in this poem, which is common in modern poetry. It is mostly a free verse poem.  He has his sister ask if the world will end, which would happen if the sun went out, and he says it is impossible.  This might be a question to Scrub about if the world did end, what had he done?  The reader is lead to the conclusion that he had done nothing, wasting his time with basketball.  He has invested all of his time into it, even though he really doesn't want to but sticks with it for some reason.  He points out how life goes on, how one day he will move on and have a family and a dog and go on vacations.  But he will still go to games, showing how basketball will always be a part of him.

I do not feel like I can compare this to my own poetry, considering I have never written any.  But I can compare ideas.  I feel like I could use a lot of these ideas, since I've had similar experiences, but I really do not want to.  I'd rather talk about the world and what the point of life in general is.  Not talk about sports, because that is just a game that ends, and it is also cliché and overplayed.

Ridl, Jack. Losing Season. Fort Lee, NJ: CavanKerry, 2009. Print.