When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories: Poems

by E. Ethelbert Miller

Overview

Much-honored Washington, D.C. poet activist E. Ethelbert Miller delights and surprises us with his deft imaginings and portraits. Ethelbert’s poems play out in baseball rhythm and express the joy of living, despite the bitter challenges in today’s world. These poems define our time and allow us to see ourselves as human through the lens of baseball, family and music.

When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories is Miller's second book of baseball poems. Here he touches new bases. There are poems about Marcel Duchamp and Ornette Coleman as well as Whitey Ford and Don Larsen. Miller's poems move the outdoor game indoors where there are moments of disappointment and despair. Baseball can be a blues game. Tommy John surgery is a way of holding onto hope. Many of these poems were written during the Covid pandemic. They beckon fans back to the ballpark. They remind us to enjoy a game that is precious and maybe even essential to our wellness. Coming after If God Invented Baseball, Miller seems to emerge from a literary dugout after a brief rain delay, ready to celebrate the American pastime again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947951365
Publisher:	City Point Press
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	1,064,322
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

E. Ethelbert Miller is a writer and literary activist. He is the author of two memoirs and several books of poetry including The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller, a comprehensive collection that represents over 40 years of his work. For 17 years Miller served as the editor of Poet Lore, the oldest poetry magazine published in the United States. His poetry has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Miller is a two-time Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Fellow to Israel. He holds an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from Emory and Henry College and has taught at several universities.

Miller is host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and host and producer of The Scholars on UDC-TV. In recent years, Miller has been inducted into the 2015 Washington DC Hall of Fame and awarded the 2016 AWP George Garret Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature and the 2016 DC Mayor's Arts Award for Distinguished Honor. In 2018, he was inducted into Gamma Xi Phi and appointed as an ambassador for the Authors Guild. He was awarded a 2020 grant by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Miller’s most recent book If God Invented Baseball, published by City Point Press, was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction Emily Ruth Rutter xv

Hit This 3

Shortstop 4

Girl in a Ball Park with Her Back to the Stands 5

Roberto 6

Whitey Ford 8

Third Base 9

The Batting Order 10

The Night Before September 29, 1954 11

May 28, 1957 12

Howard University, October 1969 13

Ornette 14

Kind of Blue 15

The Scout 16

Manager Descending Down the Batting Order 17

The Rundown 18

Picasso 19

Hamiltonian Artists 20

The World Series 21

Don Larsen for a Day 22

In a Sentimental Mood 23

The Called Third Strike 24

The Unexpected 25

When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery 26

The Designated Hitter 27

Free Agent 28

Domestic Violence 29

In Between Innings 30

For the Love of the Game 31

Pitching Is No Way to Treat a Muse 32

The No-Hitter 33

The Blown Save 34

Mudcat 35

The Negro League 36

The Third Base Coach 37

Lost in the Sun 39

Stolen Secrets from the Ground Crew 40

The Cardboard Season of2020 41

True Confessions of a Baseball 42

The Bean Ball 43

Conversation with My Body 44

A Rookie During the Season of Coronavirus 46

After the Swinging Sonnet Is Sung 47

Tommy John Knocks on the Bedroom Door 48

Baseball's Trinity 50

The Closer 51

Just Let Us Play 52

Extra Innings 53

When the Games Return 54

About the Author 55