7th Game : 1960 Series

By Paul Blackburn 1926–1971 Paul Blackburn

—for Joel—

Nice day,

sweet October afternoon

Men walk the sun-shot avenues,

Second, Third, eyes

intent elsewhere

ears communing with transistors in shirt pockets

Bars are full, quiet,

discussion during commercials

only

Pirates lead New York 4-1, top of the 6th, 2

Yankees on base, 1 man out

What a nice day for all this !

Handsome women, even

dreamy jailbait, walk

nearly neglected :

men’s eyes are blank

their thoughts are all in Pittsburgh

Last half of the 9th, the score tied 9-all,

Mazeroski leads off for the Pirates

The 2nd pitch he simply, sweetly

CRACK!

belts it clean over the left-field wall

Blocks of afternoon

acres of afternoon

Pennsylvania Turnpikes of afternoon . One

diamond stretches out in the sun

the 3rd base line

and what men come down

The final score, 10-9

Yanquis, come home

Source: The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn (Persea Books, 1989)

Biography

Paul Blackburn is best known as a Black Mountain Poet because of his role as contributing editor and distributor of the Black Mountain Review: and his subsequent inclusion with the group in Donald Allen’s influential New American Poetry anthology (1960). Although many of Blackburn’s concerns with formal innovation were shared by such faculty members of the experimental Black Mountain College as Robert Creeley and Charles Olson, . . .

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