Fast Break

Using sports themes, American poets examine popular culture and fame, youth and dynamism, tribal loyalties, or sometimes the pure form of the athlete as artist. Many sports poems depict the nobility and camaraderie commonly also seen in military odes and ballads honoring the strength, community, and devotion of soldiers on the field.

While “Fast Break” most immediately represents the random intervention of fallibility and death through the metaphor of a quick basketball game turnaround, the poem also harkens to the brotherhood of team sports (“together as brothers” in Line 20), the joy of moving as one with other people, and the glory of sacrificing oneself to a greater cause.

The basketball terms “shot” (Line 2), “defender” (Line 10), and “guard” (Lines 9 and 23) also resonate with martial meaning; when the offensive player commits, he “explodes / in a fury” (Line 25-26), like a weapon in battle. The military metaphor resonates most clearly in the most epitaph-like line of the poem, “for the game he loved like a country” (Line 32), imbuing the player’s dedication with increasing layers of meaning and scope.