The Poetry of Baseball
An interview with Sandra Marchetti
By Norah Vawter
Just in time for baseball season, Sandra Marchetti has published her second full-length poetry collection, Aisle 228. The book is about the 2016 Chicago Cubs, the author’s decades-long devotion to this team, the experience of going to ball games with her father, and listening to baseball on the radio. The title refers to the section of Wrigley Field where the author and her father attended games for about 20 years. Marchetti’s poetry is smart, lyrical, lithe, and accessible. I often found myself sitting with a poem, mulling it over, and coming back later with a new perspective. It’s a fun book: you could even take it to the ballpark. But there’s also plenty of depth here, because Marchetti has a lot to say–about life, loss, the passage of time, and of course (finally) winning. She makes full use of her subject matter, along with the enticing metaphors you can play with when you’re talking baseball.
Marchetti lived in the D.C. area while she was a graduate student at George Mason University in Northern Virginia, earning her M.F.A in creative writing, which is where we met. She was kind enough to join me for an interview about the poetry of baseball, why the game offers such a rich world to write about, how the book draws on her life experiences and relationship with her father, and how it’s not all autobiographical because poets can also write fiction. Our conversation, and the book itself, reminds me that we don’t write or read in bubbles. Instead there are all these pieces of life poking in and out, reaching us, connecting us, like baseball on the radio.
“If it never happened,
would we go on buying
the season tickets, scuffling
through turnstiles, slowed
at the bag check? …
We flicker in our seats, dimly
recede, but never leave.”
(Sandra Marchetti, “The Unsayable,” Aisle 228.)
Poet Sandra Marchetti
Can you talk about how this collection came about, and the personal experiences that led to writing the book?
Sure! When I was in junior high, I wrote a poem about the first Cubs playoff game I attended at Wrigley Field. It was a night game–rare at that time–and everything about the atmosphere felt unique and so anticipatory. It’s probably, to date, the longest poem I ever wrote. I took it to the writing center at school to try to improve it, and the tutor was confused by the piece and the language I was using to try to describe the game. Unfortunately, the poem was lost. It was up on my fridge for a long time, but written in cursive on notebook paper, and ultimately did not survive to my adulthood. I think I knew I had the desire to write about this topic since that time, and once I finished my first book, Confluence, it was clear this would be my next project.
This is also a book about growing up, family, being part of a community, watching and listening to ball games with your dad. I’m not sure if all the poems are autobiographical, but Aisle 228 feels as much a love letter to a father as it is to a sport.
I’d like to mention that poets can lie too! It’s not just something fiction writers get to do. I’ve enjoyed retelling/filling in the gaps of stories that were told to me about games I wasn’t [alive] to see, etc., but this is a fractured memoir, to be sure. On the topic of my father–I’m not sure he has really understood or liked my poetry, even though he’s been a great cheerleader for me, and showed up to celebrate me the way you’d hope a father would. This book is written in his lexicon. It borrows his language, diction, and incorporates his heroes, legends, and villains.
Do you see this book as a coming of age story?
That’s a really interesting viewpoint I hadn’t thought of! I see more of my father’s aging, and the overall family lineage in the book, but “I” do grow up in the book as well. And throughout those years, baseball has always been there for me. While taking road trips, washing the dishes, taking a nap–always on in the background and oftentimes in the foreground marking the years. That’s part of what we love about the game–the steadiness of one game at a time, a way to mark the days and years.
Are you often drawn to narratives about baseball, or other sports? Do you have any favorites?
My favorite baseball movie is Bull Durham. The writing is just incredible, even though the fact checking may be a bit suspect. I’ll often tell poetry readers/writers that baseball is “just a great metaphor” to play with. And then I’ll describe this book as a “love letter to the game” to fellow sports fans. He he! There’s so much richness to the metaphor of the game, and so much beauty in the game itself. Contemporary writers of baseball literature who I love include: Andrew Forbes, Krystal Languell, and Shakeia Taylor.
The author and her father in the Cubs radio booth with broadcasters Pat Hughes and Ron Coomer.
The radio plays a surprisingly big role in this book of poetry. And I’m here for it.
The voices that inspired the sound of this book were not fellow writers, but broadcasters. Vin Scully, Len Kasper, and Pat Hughes, to name a few. The cadence of the voices and the rhythm and diction are at times both comforting and linguistically fascinating to me. In a way, listening to baseball on the radio functions much like a novel. The picture you create in your head is “better” than the one anyone else could provide you–a television version or a film just doesn’t match the richness I can envision.
“ … On Sunday
dressed our best, we crowd around
the beaming green and rise as one
spirits the blue. Tell me,
what do you do at church?”
(Sandra Marchetti, “Praise,” Aisle 228.)
We also need to talk about baseball and religion. You allude to the similarity between being a fan and being religious, particularly in the poem “Praise.” I’m fascinated by this idea and would love to hear more.
Yeah, this is part of the richness of the metaphor that I was talking about. Attending a baseball game reminds me so much of church–we wear special clothes to attend, file in, receive blessings (special food), watch for miracles, stand in awe, sing songs, etc. I grew up in a pretty religious household, so this was worth exploring for me.
At DCTRENDING our focus is the way that arts and culture intersect with social change. In other words, why art matters. Why does poetry matter, not just to you personally, but to our larger society?
Poetry can be anything we want it to be. For me, poetry is pleasure. Poetry is awe. Writing poetry is deep play and puzzle solving that scratches an itch deep in my brain. We deserve pleasure and play and awe. One of my favorite quotes about poetry is, “No threat, no poem,” which is a phrase of Dave Smith’s. To me, that’s true. Even in a “fun” collection like this, if there’s nothing at stake, there’s no point in reading or writing.
You and I know each other from our time as graduate students at George Mason University, getting our M.F.A.s in creative writing here in Northern Virginia. What was your experience at Mason and with the D.C. area writing or arts community?
Mason was incredibly rigorous. It was everything you’d want in an M.F.A. program in that way–I read a ton, learned a lot, and was tested and flexed in so many ways. The great thing about the program was that I came in as one writer, stretched and learned during my years there, and then came back to my work so much better informed afterward. That said, some of my favorite memories of D.C. are Busboys & Poets, attending readings (and getting lost on my way to) Politics and Prose, and the Lannan Series events. I also attended Nats games at RFK stadium (Wily Mo Peña anyone?!) and Nats Park and enjoyed myself thoroughly. I also went to every Mason Men’s Basketball home game I could.
Are there any D.C. area poets or writers you admire?
So many. The late Alan Cheuse was very influential for me. E. Ethelbert Miller blurbed this book, and I love his work. Leslie Pietryzk is also a friend and an idol. Carolyn Forché is an icon who I’ve admired for 20 years.
In the poetry world at large, what are you excited about right now?
It feels like folks are realizing that no topic is really off limits when it comes to poetry. We are getting more pop culture collections, and I really dig that. Redactions, a literary magazine, is doing a “sitcom” issue soon, so check that out! I want to read poems about sitcoms!
Favorite book of poetry published in the last year? (Or a favorite if you can’t pick just one.)
I’ve got to go with my girl Krystal Languell’s Systems Thinking with Flowers. She’s a master of the genre of baseball poems as well (find them in the archives at the Baseball Prospectus website!) and her style captures the fragmented way the game colors the backgrounds of our lives.
Is there anything I missed that you’d like to share with our readers?
If you’re not already, please make sure you are following Ladies Who Like Baseball (@LONTDC1 on Twitter). This is a Washington Nationals fan account for the ladies, by the ladies, and they absolutely crack me up.
If you’re interested in checking out Marchetti’s lovely collection, you can support an independent press and its authors by purchasing your copy of Aisle 228 directly from the publisher, Texas A&M University Press, here.
Sandra Marchetti is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Aisle 228 and Confluence, along with four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. She earned an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. Currently, she serves as the Coordinator of Tutoring Services at the College of DuPage in the Chicagoland area.
Norah Vawter is DCTRENDING’s local authors editor. She has an M.F.A. in creative writing from George Mason University and is querying her first novel. She lives with her family in Northern Virginia. Follow her on Twitter @norahvawter, where she shares words and works of D.C. area writers every Friday.