Poet's Choice

By Mary Karr
Sunday, May 25, 2008; BW12

Hearing a ball game on the radio recently said spring to me, as does any trip to Yankee stadium (now in its last season before demolition). In New York, the chatter about team injuries can take on a tribal intensity -- which is why I cracked Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball. Editor and translator Cor van den Heuvel is a haiku aficionado whose single-image poems capture moments from my own baseball-centered childhood, like these two:

baseball cards

spread out on the bed

April rain

biking to the field

under a cloudless sky

my glove on the handlebars

In George Swede's work, as is evident in the two here, the natural world interrupts and supercedes play, lending totemic power to things like dandelion seeds and sunbeams:

empty baseball field

a dandelion seed floats through

the strike zone

village ball game

through knotholes in the old fence

evening sunbeams

Michael Fessler, who's published two books on the game along with five of haiku, best captures the game's players. His last line really drags me into the intimacy of those screaming matches:

August heat

umpire and manager

nose to nose

Despite the sometimes curious carnal power of these poems in English, the Japanese poets managed to make the haiku a spiritual instant -- delicate as tissue paper. Imai Sei even creates psychological complexity:

after the error

the player still faces the outfield

towering clouds

Such feeling in such a small space. These haiku prove that in a secular culture, the stadium -- from little league through the majors -- may be the closest many Americans get to a house of worship, which is why I end with Raffael de Gruttola's meditation on eternity:

lost in the lights

the high fly ball that

never comes down

(All of these poems appear in "Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball," edited with translations by Cor van den Heuvel and Nanae Tamura. Norton. 2007. Copyright 2007 by Cor van den Heuvel and individual copyrights by the poets.)

Mary Karr's most recent book of poems is "Sinners Welcome."