Nine men stand waiting
          under storm clouds that gather.
               Someone asks for time.
                    --Baseball Haiku by Ron Vazzano
                         from “Line Drives”

            April, with its showers sweet, is said to be the cruelest month.  It’s also National Poetry Month.  And this poetic period marks the start of the baseball season.  Baseball is not only our national pastime, it is also one of the great unifying factors in a diverse nation.  The fans come from all walks of life.  Baseball is the theme and setting of many works of American literature and film.  It fills the airwaves.  So why not a book of baseball poetry?

            “Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems” takes on both the action of the game, the emotions of players and spectators, memory and expectation in close-up images and wide shots.  It was edited by Brooke Horvath, a poet and professor of English at Kent State University in Ohio and Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. 

           The 92 poems in the book are by some of today’s outstanding poets, including Yusef Komunyakaa, Richard Brautigan, Elinor Nauen (who wrote the foreword), Jay Rogoff and Charles Bukowski.  There is a poignant poem, “Baseball Cards”, by the late Dan Quisenberry, who spent twelve seasons as a major league pitcher.

            For many people, the quintessential literary expression of baseball is “Casey at the Bat”, the 1888 poem by Ernest L. Thayer.  But Wiles and Horvath want to go beyond the mere subject matter of baseball to poems that will “provide the occasion for passionate attention and articulate reflection.”  “Line Drives” is divided into five sections, the first emphasizing springtime, youth and hope, the second bringing in doubts and maturity, the third and fourth growing more autumnal.  But as Katharine Harer writes in the opening line of “The Cure”, “baseball is a good antidote for death.”  The game has no time limit and spring always returns, as it is doing now.

            This OFF THE PAGE program also includes an interview with Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of the United States and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  It was recorded during his visit to Binghamton University on March 22^nd.  Kooser has only written one poem about baseball, and that was to lament the slowness of a game.  But his comments on the acceptance and accessibility of poetry in America today do apply to the poems in “Line Drives”.

            Tim Wiles joins Bill Jaker for an hour of poetry and baseball.  To join in the discussion call during the 1:00 PM live broadcast to 1-888/359-9754 or post an e-mail HERE or directly to WSKG.Radio@Gmail.com.

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A hot soak in the tub is remedy often given for a stressful day.  Author Elaine W. Miller of Horseheads, has written a book that may make you better appreciate the day to day challenges moms experience .In ”S.O.S. (Splashes of Serenity): Bathtime Reflections for Drained Moms”, Miller shares 30 five-minute meditations of  poignant, often amusing vignettes meant to encourage mothers along their journey, and  verses of scripture for further meditation.

WSKG’s Kate Cook hosts this early Mother’s Day OFF THE PAGE on Tuesday, May 2^nd  live at 1pm, recorded broadcast at 7pm.