A BRIEF HISTORY OF U.S. POETRY

April 30, 2021 at 2:11 am (Allan Seeger, Allen Ginsberg, Allen Tate, Amanda Gorman, Amy Lowell, Anders Carlson-Wee, Anne Bradstreet, Anne Sexton, Ben Mazer, Best American Poetry, Billy Collins, Bob Dylan, Carolyn Forche, Charles Bernstein, Christopher Ricks, Claudia Rankine, Delmore Schwartz, Derrick Michael Hudson, Dial Prize, Don Share, Donald Justice, E.E. Cummings, Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Lee Masters, Edna Millay, Elizabeth Barrett, Emily Dickinson, Fanny Howe, Ford Maddox Ford, Franz Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, H Bloom, Helen Vendler, Joe Green, John Ashbery, John Berryman, John Crowe Ransom, Katia Kapovich, Kent Johnson, Marilyn Chin, Marjorie Perloff, Mark McGurl, Mary Oliver, Maya Angelou, Patricia Lockwood, Paul Engle, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pete Seeger, Philip Nikolayev, Phillis Wheatley, Rape Joke, Rita Dove, Robert Creeley, Robert Frost, Robert Graves, Robert Lowell, Tosa Motokiyu, Yone Noguchi)

Phillis Wheatley, Poems on various subjects, religious and moral - Age of Revolution

1650 Anne Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America: By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts published in London.

1773 Phillis Wheatley, a slave, publishes Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. During the American Revolution she wrote to George Washington, who thanked her, praised her poetry, and invited her to his headquarters.

1791 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is published in Paris, in French.  Ben Franklin’s Autobiography appears in London, for the first time in English, two years later.   Had it been published in America, the Europeans would have laughed.  The American experiment isn’t going to last, anyway.

Franklin, the practical man, the scientist, and America’s true founding father, weighs in on poetry: it’s frivolous.

1794  Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey make plans to go to Pennsylvania in a communal living experiment, but their personalities clash and the plan is aborted.  Southey becomes British Poet Laureate twenty years later.

1803  William Blake, author of “America: A Prophecy” is accused of crying out “Damn the King!” in Sussex, England, narrowly escaping imprisonment for treason.

1815  George Ticknor, before becoming literature Chair at Harvard, travels to Europe for 4 years, spending 17 months in Germany.

1817  “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant appears in the North American Review.

1824  Byron, who wanted to travel to America (he met George Ticknor in Europe), dies in Greece.

1824  Lafayette, during tour of U.S, calls on Edgar Poe’s grandmother, revolutionary war veteran widow.

1832  Washington Irving edits London edition of William Cullen Bryant’s Poems to avoid politically offending British readers.

1835 Massachusetts senator and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier mobbed and stoned in Concord, New Hampshire.

1835  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow appointed Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard.

1836  Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes 500 copies of Divinity School Address anonymously.  He will not publish another book for 6 years.

1838  Poe’s translated work begins appearing in Russia. Dostoevsky, influenced by Poe, publishes him.

1843  Transcendentalist, Unitarian minister, Harvard Divinity School student Christopher Pearse Cranch marries the sister of T.S. Eliot’s Unitarian grandfather; dedicates Poems to Emerson, published in The Dial, a magazine edited by Margaret Fuller and Emerson; frequent visitor to Brook Farm.  Cranch is more musical and sensuous than Emerson; even Poe can tolerate him; Cranch’s poem “Enosis” pre-figures Baudelaire’s “Correspondences.”

T.S. Eliot’s family is deeply rooted in New England Unitarianism and Transcendentalism through Cranch and Emerson’s connection to his grandfather, Harvard Divinity graduate, William Greenleaf Eliot, founder of Washington U., St. Louis.

1845  Elizabeth Barrett writes Poe with news of “The Raven’s” popularity in England.  The poem appeared in a daily American newspaper and produced instant fame, though Poe’s reputation as a critic and leader of the Magazine Era was well-established.  During this period Poe coins “Heresy of the Didactic” and “A Long Poem Does Not Exist.”  In a review of Barrett’s 1840 volume of poems which led to Barrett’s fame before she met Robert Browning, Poe introduced his piece by saying he would not, as was typically done, review her work superficially because she was a woman. Poe dedicated his 1845 Poems to Elizabeth Barrett. Then Robert Browning entered the picture.

1845 Poe accuses Longfellow of plagiarism.

1847  Ralph Waldo Emerson is in England, earning his living as an orator.

1848  Charles Baudelaire’s first translations of Poe appear in France.

1848  James Russell Lowell publishes “A Fable For Critics” anonymously.

1848 Female Poets of America, an anthology of poems by American women, is published by the powerful and influential anthologist, Rufus Griswold—who believes women naturally write a different kind of poetry.  Griswold’s earlier success, The Poets and Poetry of America (1842) contains 3 poems by Poe and 45 by Griswold’s friend, Charles Fenno Hoffman. In a review, Poe remarks that readers of anthologies buy them to see if they are in them.

1848  Poe publishes Eureka and the Rationale of Verse, exceptional works on the universe—and verse.

1849 Edgar Poe is apparently murdered in Baltimore; leading periodicals ignore strange circumstances of Poe’s death and one, Horace Greeley’s Tribune, hires Griswold (who signs his piece ‘Ludwig’) to take the occasion to attack the character of the poet. There is no press notice of Poe’s unusual passing. Baltimore Sun writer, Joseph Snodgrass, who happens to live close to where Poe is found in distress, and Poe’s hated cousin Neilson Poe (who happens to appear) are prime suspects according to Scarriet. The Baltimore Sun, like the New York Tribune, covers up any hint of foul play with bland and brief coverage.

1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlett Letter. There is recent speculation the work is loosely based on Edgar Poe, Fanny Osgood, and Rufus Griswold.

1855 Griswold reviews Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and calls it a “mass of stupid filth.”  Griswold, whose second wife was apparently a man (their divorce is very complicated, involving Griswold lending out his daughter) fills his review with words such as “vileness,” “rotting,” and “shame.”  Whitman later includes the Griswold review in one of his editions of Leaves.

1856  English Traits, extolls the English race, claiming it was the English “character” that vanquished India, is published in the U.S. and England, by poet and new age priest Ralph Waldo Emerson, as England waits for the inevitable Civil War to tear her rival, America, apart.

1859.  In a conversation with William Dean Howells, Emerson calls Hawthorne’s latest book “mush” and furiously calls Poe “the jingle man.”

1860  William Cullen Bryant introduces Abraham Lincoln at Cooper Union; the poet advises the new president on his cabinet selection.

1867  First collection of African American “Slave Songs” published.

1883  “The New Colossus” is composed by Emma Lazarus; engraved on the Statue of Liberty, 1903

1883  Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox rejected by publisher on grounds of immorality.

1888 “Casey at the Bat” published anonymously. The author, Ernest Thayer, does not become known as the author of the poem until 1909—he is the uncle of Scofield Thayer, who will publish “The Waste Land” in the revived Dial.

1890  Emily Dickinson’s posthumous book published by Mabel Todd and Thomas Higginson.  William Dean Howells gives it a good review, and it sells well.

1893  William James, the “nitrous oxide philosopher,” Emerson’s godson, becomes Gertrude Stein’s influential professor at Harvard.

1896 Paul Laurence Dunbar publishes Lyrics of Lowly Life.

1897  Wallace Stevens enters Harvard, falling under the spell of William James, as well as George Santayana.

1904  Yone Noguchi publishes “Proposal to American Poets” as the Haiku rage begins in the United States and Britain, mostly due to Japan’s surprising victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Imagism, eventually celebrated as “new,” is merely a copy of haiku, and belongs to the same trend.

1910  John Crowe Ransom, Fugitive, Southern Agrarian, New Critic, takes a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University.

1910  John Lomax publishes “Cowboy Songs and Frontier Ballads.”

1912  Harriet Monroe founds Poetry magazine; in 1880s attended literary gatherings in New York with William Dean Howells and Richard Henry Stoddard (Poe biographer) and in 1890s met Whistler, Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Aubrey Beardsley.  Ezra Pound is Poetry’s London editor.

1913  American Imagist poet H.D. marries British Imagist poet Richard Aldington.

1913 The Armory Show in New York, which brings modern art to America, occurs under the guidance of Pound and T.S. Eliot’s attorney and modern art collector, John Quinn.

1914 Robert Frost meets Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell in London.

1914  Ezra Pound works as Yeats‘ secretary in Sussex, England.

1915  Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology published.  Masters was law partner of Clarence Darrow.

1916 Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke publish Spectra, a poetry hoax spoofing Imagism and everyone is fooled.

1917  Robert Frost begins teaching at Amherst College.

1920  “The Sacred Wood” by T.S. Eliot, banker, London. Decries “Hamlet.” Writes, “immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.”

1921  Margaret Anderson’s Little Review loses court case and is declared obscene for publishing a portion of James Joyce’s Ulysses, which is banned in the United States.  Random House immediately tries to get the ban lifted in order to publish the work.

1922  T.S.Eliot’s “The Waste Land” awarded The Dial Prize before Ezra Pound has finished editing it.

1922  D.H Lawrence and Frieda stay with Mabel Dodge in Taos, New Mexico.

1923  Edna St. Vincent Millay wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1923  William Butler Yeats wins Nobel Prize for Literature

1924  Robert Frost wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

1924  Ford Maddox Ford founds the Transatlantic Review.   Stays with Allen Tate and Robert Lowell in his lengthy sojourn to America, and helps to found the American Writing Program Era.

1924  Marianne Moore wins The Dial Prize; becomes editor of The Dial the next year, as E.E. Cummings elopes with the retiring editor Scofield Thayer’s wife.

1924  James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children opens.

1925  E.E. Cummings wins The Dial Prize.

1926  Yaddo Artist Colony opens

1926 Dorothy Parker publishes her first book of poems, With Enough Rope.

1927  Walt Whitman biography wins Pulitzer Prize

1927 Laura Riding, who published poems in The Fugitive, together with Robert Graves, influence William Empson and the New Criticism with their Survey of Modernist Poetry. She’s almost killed jumping out a 4th story window 2 years later.

1929 Harry Crosby, Black Sun Press editor, free verse poet, nephew of JP Morgan, dies at 31 in suicide pact with his lover.

1930  “I’ll Take My Stand” published by Fugitive/Southern Agrarians and future New Critics, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, Allen Tate defend ways of the Old South.

1932  Paul Engle wins Yale Younger Poet Prize, judged by member of John Crowe Ransom’s Fugitive circle.  Engle, a prolific fundraiser, builds the Iowa Workshop into a Program Writing Empire.

1933  T.S. Eliot delivers his speech on “free-thinking jews” at the University of Virginia.

1934  “Is Verse A Dying Technique?” published by Edmund Wilson.

1936  New Directions founded by Harvard sophomore James Laughlin.

1937  Robert Lowell camps out in Allen Tate’s yard.  Lowell has left Harvard to study with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College. The trip by Lowell was recommended by the Lowell family psychiatrist, the Fugitive poet, Merrill Moore.

1938  First Edition of textbook Understanding Poetry by New Critics Brooks and Warren, helps to canonize unread poets Williams and Pound, while attacking Poe.

1938  Aldous Huxley moves to Hollywood.

1938 Delmore Schwartz publishes In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, at 25, a smash-hit volume of short stories and poetry.

1939  Allen Tate starts Writing Program at Princeton.

1939  W.H. Auden moves to the United States and earns living as college professor.

1940  Mark Van Doren is awarded Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

1941 F.O. Matthiessen publishes American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman.

1943  Ezra Pound indicted for treason by the United States government.

1946  Wallace Stegner founds Stanford Writing Program.  Yvor Winters will teach Pinsky, Haas, Hall and Gunn.

1948  Pete Seeger, nephew of WW I poet Alan Seeger (“I Have A Rendezvous With Death”) forms The Weavers, the first singer-songwriter ‘band’ in the rock era.

1948  T.S. Eliot wins Nobel Prize

1949  T.S. Eliot viciously attacks Poe in From Poe To Valery

1949  Ezra Pound is awarded the Bollingen Prize.  The poet Robert Hillyer protests and Congress resolves its Library will no longer fund the award.  Hillyer accuses Paul Melon, T.S. Eliot and New Critics of a fascist conspiracy.

1949 Elizabeth Bishop appointed U.S. Poet Laureate.

1950  William Carlos Williams wins first National Book Award for Poetry

1950  Gwendolyn Brooks wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1950 W.S Merwin tutors Robert Graves‘ son in Majorca.

1951  John Crowe Ransom, the Modernist T.S. Eliot of the American South, is awarded the Bollingen Prize.

1953  Dylan Thomas dies in New York City.

1954  Theodore Roethke wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1955 John Ashbery wins Yale Younger Prize for Some Trees. Judge W.H. Auden requested the manuscript.

1957  Allen Tate is awarded the Bollingen.

1957  “Howl” by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg triumphs in obscenity trial as the judge finds book “socially redeeming;” wins publicity in Time & Life.

1957  New Poets of England and America, Donald Hall, Robert Pack, Louis Simspon, eds.

1959  Carl Sandburg wins Grammy for Best Performance – Documentary Or Spoken Word (Other Than Comedy) for his recording of Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait with the New York Philharmonic.

1959  M.L Rosenthal coins the term “Confessional Poetry” in The Nation as he pays homage to Robert Lowell.

1959 Donald Justice wins the Lamont Poetry Prize for Summer Anniversaries.

1960  New American Poetry 1945-1960, Donald Allen, editor.

1961  Yvor Winters is awarded the Bollingen.

1961  Denise Levertov becomes poetry editor of The Nation.

1961  Louis Untermeyer appointed Poet Laureate Consultant In Poetry To the Library of Congress (1961-63)

1961 Robert Graves appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford—holds the post until 1966.

1962  Sylvia Plath takes her own life in London.

1964  John Crowe Ransom wins The National Book Award for Selected Poems. His Kenyon Review is where Plath and other poets were most eager to publish.

1964  Keats biography by W.Jackson Bate wins Pulitzer. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet by the same author predates, and is a more readable version of, Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence.

1965  Horace Gregory is awarded the Bollingen.  Gregory had attacked the poetic reputation of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

1967  Anne Sexton wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1968  Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, directed by Zeffirelli, nominated for Best Picture by Hollywood.

1971  The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner published.  Kenner, a friend of William F. Buckley, Jr., saved Pound’s reputation with this work; Kenner also savaged the reputation of Millay.

1971  W.S Merwin wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1972  John Berryman jumps to his death off bridge near University of Minnesota.

Berryman’s classes in the 50’s were filled with future prize-winners, not necessarily because he and his students were great, but because his students were on the ground-floor of the Writing Program era.

1972  Frank O’Hara wins National Book Award for Collected Poems

1974 Anne Sexton commits suicide.

1975  Gary Snyder wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1976  Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow’s novel on Delmore Schwartz, wins Pulitzer.

1976 John Ashbery wins Pulitzer, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award for Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror

1977 Gerald Stern wins the Lamont Poetry Prize, Judges Alan Dugan, Philip Levine, and Charles Wright.

1978  Language magazine, Bernstein & Andrews, begins 4 year run.  Charles Bernstein studied J.L Austin’s brand of ‘ordinary language philosophy’ at Harvard.

1980  Helen Vendler wins National Book Critics Circle Award

1981 Seamus Heaney becomes Harvard visiting professor.

1981 Carolyn Forche wins the Lamont Poetry Prize for The Country Between Us.

1981  Derek Walcott founds Boston Playwrights’ Theater at Boston University.

1981  Oscar Wilde biography by Richard Ellman wins Pulitzer.

1982  Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems wins Pulitzer.

1984  Harold Bloom savagely attacks Poe in review of Poe’s Library of America works (2 vol) in New York Review of Books, repeating similar attacks by Yvor Winters, Aldous Huxley and T.S. Eliot.

1984 Charles Bernstein at a poetry conference in Alabama mentions the “policemen of official verse culture.” Gerald Stern presses Bernstein to name names. He does not—except to mention T.S. Eliot as being disliked by WC Williams.

1984  Marc Smith founds Slam Poetry in Chicago.

1984  Mary Oliver is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1985 Gwendolyn Brooks appointed U.S. Poet Laureate for 1985-6.

1986  Golden Gate by Vikram Seth, a novel in verse, is published.

1987  The movie “Barfly” depicts life of Charles Bukowski.

1988  David Lehman’s Best American Poetry Series debuts with John Ashbery as first guest editor.  The first words of the first poem (by A.R. Ammons) in the Series are: William James.

1990 Robert Bly publishes Iron John.

1991  “Can Poetry Matter?” by Dana Gioia is published in The Atlantic. According to the author, poetry has become an incestuous viper’s pit of academic hucksters.

1996  Jorie Graham wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1997 Kent Johnson and Tosa Motokiyu are suspected authors of Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada, one of the richest and greatest controversies in world letters.

1999  Peter Sacks wins Georgia Prize, Jorie Graham, judge.

1999  Billy Collins signs 3-book, 6-figure deal with Random House.

2002  Ron Silliman’s Blog founded. Silliman will attack “quietism” while defending the poetry avant-garde.

2002  Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club wins Pulitzer Prize.

2002  Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems published.

2004  Foetry.com founded by Alan Cordle. The site looks at Poetry Prizes, judges, and poets, in a controversial manner. Shortly before his death, Robert Creeley defends his poetry colleagues on Foetry.com.

2004  Franz Wright wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

2005 Ted Kooser wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

2005 The LA Times call Alan Cordle “the most despised…most feared man” in American poetry.”

2005  William Logan wins National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

2006  Fulcrum No. 5, editors Philip Nikolayev, Katia Kapovich, appears, featuring works of Landis Everson and his editor, Ben Mazer, also Eliot Weinberger, Glyn Maxwell, Joe Green, and Marjorie Perloff.

2007 Joan Houlihan dismisses Foetry.com as “losers” in a Poets & Writers letter. Defends the integrity of Georgia and Tupelo press.

2007  Paul Muldoon succeeds Alice Quinn as poetry editor of The New Yorker.

2007 Frank Bidart wins the Bollingen Prize.

2009 Fanny Howe is awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

2009  The Program Era by Mark McGurl, published by Harvard University Press, an historic look at college creative writing.

2009  Following the mass banning of Alan Cordle, Thomas Brady, Desmond Swords and Christopher Woodman from The Poetry Foundation’s Blog Harriet (which soon bans all public comments), they decide to create Blog Scarriet (September 1 2009 to present)

2010 Sir Christopher Ricks publishes True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound.

2011 Rita Dove publishes her Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century American Poetry. Helen Vendler and Marjorie Perloff object to her choices. Scarriet defends Dove.

2012 Natasha Trethewey is appointed U.S. Poet Laureate

2013 Mark Edmundson, U VA professor, attacks the quality of contemporary poetry in Harper’s magazine.

2013 Sharon Olds wins the Pulitzer for Stag’s Leap.

2013 Don Share becomes editor of Poetry.

2013 Patricia Lockwood’s poem “Rape Joke” goes viral on social media.

2013 Paul Lewis, professor, brings Poe statue to Boston—the Jingle Man returneth.

2014 Billy Collins interviews Paul McCartney.

2014 Maya Angelou dies.

2014 Peter Gizzi publishes Selected Poems.

2015 Derek Michael Hudson is controversially published as Yi-Fen Chou in David Lehman’s Best American Poetry series, Sherman Alexie, guest editor.

2015 Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric wins multiple poetry and criticism awards, and is on New York Times bestseller list in nonfiction.

2016 Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize in Literature.

2016 Ron Padgett writes 3 poems for the film Paterson.

2016 Helen Vendler reviews Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom, editor, Ben Mazer, in NYR

2017 John Ashbery dies.

2017 William Logan, poet, and the best-know poetry reviewer in America, accuses Norton editor Jill Bialosky of plagiarism. Her book is called Poetry Will Save Your Life.

2017 Garrison Keillor, who broadcasts contemporary poems in his Writer’s Almanac, accused of sexual harassment.

2017 Jorie Graham wins the Wallace Stevens Award with a stipend of $100,000.

2017 Kevin Young becomes poetry editor of The New Yorker.

2017 Kenneth Goldsmith lives and dies by “found poem.” Autopsy of Michael Brown causes outrage.

2018 Anders Carlson-Wee apologizes for his poem in the Nation.

2019 Marilyn Chin is awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

2020 Ben Mazer resurrects the poems of Harry Crosby.

2020 Louise Gluck wins Nobel Prize for Literature.

2020 Don Share resigns as editor of Poetry for publishing poem by Michael Dickman.

2021 Amanda Gorman reads at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

2021 Thomas Graves, a Scarriet editor, publishes Ben Mazer and the New Romanticism.

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GAME TWO RESULTS

October 2, 2020 at 4:03 pm (Anne Bradstreet, Bob Dylan, Bob Hope, John Keats, Pascal, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Plato, Poetry Baseball, Ronald Reagan)

Blaise Pascal - Education, Pensées & Religion - Biography

Blaise Pascal blanks the LA Gamers in Dublin. Laureates lead series 2-0.

LAUREATES 1 GAMERS 0

Bob Hope, the Gamers manager, put on a brave face after the game. “We’re going back to LA to play 3 games. I like Los Angeles. Dublin’s cold as hell. Hey, Democritus pitched a hell of a game, didn’t he?” He did. Democritus registered 13 strikeouts, and was untouchable until 2 outs in the ninth when Mirza Ghalib took him deep, breaking the scoreless tie. 1-0 win for the Laureates. Pictures of Charles Dickens, with “I’m Not A Poet. I Just Hit Home Runs” were seen everywhere in Dublin. Dickens didn’t do much. Pop out. Ground out. Two strike outs. Pascal only needed 5 Ks to handcuff the Gamers. “This is why we signed Pascal,” Ronald Reagan, the Laureates manager, said. Pascal joined the Laureates in July, and mostly struggled, with an ERA near 5, in the regular season. The Gamers will call on Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen next, to get them out of their 2-0 hole. Robert Louis Stevenson and Samuel Johnson will counter for the Laureates.

CRUSADERS 7 UNIVERSE 5

It wasn’t pretty, but Wolfgang Mozart survived a 3 run homer by Bob Dylan to beat the Universe, 7-5, as the Crusaders tied up the series 1-1. Anne Bradstreet was the big bat for Madrid, hitting two home runs. The series now moves to Phoenix. Dylan sneered at Mozart as he rounded the bases after his blast, but the Crusaders pitcher just looked away bashfully and seemed to giggle. Mozart struck out 14 almost effortlessly, his sinking fastball and tempting curve both working to perfection most of the night. Plotinus got the save for Madrid. Bradstreet, who put up MVP numbers during the regular season, was obviously pleased by her performance, but only said, modestly, “I’m so glad the series is tied, now. It would have been terrible to travel to their home park down two to nothing.” Lucien Freud, the Phoenix starter, was knocked out early, and admitted to being star-struck by Mozart. “That pitching was poetry.” But he added, “Give Bob Dylan credit,” he said. “I don’t know how he hit that pitch from Mozart, much less for a home run.”

SECRETS 2 BANNERS 0

Plato has been dominating all year, and he took that domination into the playoffs, as he shut out the Florence Banners in Boston, the Secrets winning game two and tying up the series. Plato beat Percy Shelley, 2-0, as both pitchers struck out 14 hitters. Shelley was chased in the 8th, as Cole Porter broke the scoreless tie with a single, after Nathaniel Hawthorne singled and stole second. Emily Dickinson then doubled in Porter, and that’s all the scoring there was. The series now goes to Florence, where Virgil and da Vinci will match up against Pushkin and Moliere. John Keats, who has the only homer in the series so far, is happy to be on the Banners with his friend, Shelley, but admitted he wanted to play for the Secrets. “I love America. My brother George lived there.”

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THE PLAYOFFS

September 30, 2020 at 2:36 pm (Anne Bradstreet, Beethoven, Ben Franklin, Ben Mazer, Billy Beane, Billy Collins, Cole Porter, Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Delmore Schwartz, E. Poe, Glyn Maxwell, JK Rowling, Joe Green, John Betjeman, John Keats, Jonathan Swift, Kanye West, LA Gamers, Mary Angela Douglas, Merv Griffin, Nahum Tate, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Paul Simon, Philip Levine, Poetry Baseball, Robert Frost, Ronald Reagan, Sara Teasdale, Scarriet Baseball Poetry League, Thomas Hood)

Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973) - Find A Grave Memorial

Noel Coward, the Gamers shortstop, relaxing before Game One in Dublin against the Laureates.

Welcome to the first game of the Scarriet Poetry Baseball Playoffs, and Boston, Massachusetts, home of the Society Division champions, Ben Franklin’s Secrets, managed by George Washington, with the best record in the league. The Secrets take on the Florence Banners, the Wild Card Team who finished second in the Glorious Division with a solid 89 and 65 record, in a best of seven series, two in Boston, three in Florence, two in Boston (if necessary).

Here are the line ups and starters for the first game in Boston.

Florence Banners
Motto: “The One remains, the many change and pass.”
Owner Lorenze de Medici, Manager Desi Erasmus, Pitching Coach Pope Leo X
Game One Starter: Dante Alighieri

1. Ben Mazer CF .272
2. Christina Rossetti LF .281
3. John Keats 2B .279
4. Friedrich Schiller 1B .254
5. Guido Cavalcanti 3B .271
6. Thomas Moore SS .291
7. DG Rossetti RF .280
8. Glyn Maxwell C .246
9. Dante Alighieri P 17-12 3.39

Boston Secrets
Motto: “We come in the age’s most uncertain hour and sing an American tune.”
Owner B Franklin, Manager G Washington, Pitching Coach Clarence Thomas
Game One Starter: Edgar Allan Poe

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne CF .273
2. Cole Porter 1B .297
3. Emily Dickinson C .278
4. Woody Guthrie 2B .265
5. Robert Frost SS .275
6. Carl Sandburg 3B .295
7. Paul Simon RF .270
8. Kanye West LF .267
9. Edgar Allan Poe P 14-12 3.10

~~~

Here are the other two Playoff games, and lineups:

Welcome to Dublin, Ireland, where the Glorious Division champs host the Peoples Division champs, the LA Gamers!

LA Gamers
Motto: “He thought he saw an elephant that practiced on a fife.”
Owner Merv Griffin, Manager Bob Hope, Pitching Coach Lorne Michaels
Game One Starter: Lewis Carroll

1. Noel Coward SS .317
2. John Betjeman CF .325
3. Billy Collins LF .284
4. Eugene Ionesco C .279
5. Thomas Hood 2B .272
6. Joe Green 3B .261
7. Tristan Tzara 1B .267
8. Ogden Nash 3B .268
9. Lewis Carroll P 17-13 3.04 ERA

Dublin Laureates
Motto: “Luck is bestowed even on those who don’t have hands.”
Owner Nahum Tate, Manager Ronald Reagan, Pitching Coach Arthur Guinness
Game One Starter: Jonathan Swift

1. Sarah Teasdale 2B .313
2. Oliver Goldsmith CF .275
3. Alexandre Dumas LF .338
4. Charles Dickens 1B .359
5. Aphra Behn RF .262
6. Mirza Ghalib 3B .254
7. Boris Pasternak C .242
8. JK Rowling SS .228
9. Jonathan Swift P 22-5 2.80 ERA

~~

Welcome to Spain, where the Madrid Crusaders, champions of the Emperor Division host the Phoenix Universe, the Modern Division champs, in game one of the first round of the playoffs.

Phoenix Universe
Motto: “I know why the caged bird sings”
Owner Steven Spielberg, Manager Billy Beane, Pitching Coach Tom Hanks
Game One Starter: Harriet Beecher Stowe

1. Chuck Berry 3B .377
2. Maya Angelou C .316
3. Bob Dylan 2B .252
4. Decimus Juvenal RF .260
5. Paul Celan SS .249
6. Delmore Schwartz CF .247
7. Philip Levine LF .231
8. Anthony Hecht 1B .229
9. Harriet Beecher Stowe P 14-15 2.83

Madrid Crusaders
Motto: “If in my thought I have magnified the Father above the Son, let Him have no mercy on me.”
Owner Philip II, Manager Miguel Cervantes, Pitching Coach Christopher Columbus
Game One Starter: Ludwig Van Beethoven

1. Gerard Manley Hopkins CF .281
2. Hilaire Belloc C .280
3. Anne Bradstreet 3B .373
4. Aeschylus CF .253
5. Mary Angela Douglas SS .300
6. Joyce Kilmer RF .265
7. Phillis Wheatley LF .252
8. Countee Cullen 1B .245
9. Beethoven P 14-5 2.22

And away we go!

 

 

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MADRID CRUSADERS SHOCK THE WORLD!

September 24, 2020 at 10:34 pm (Aeschylus, Anne Bradstreet, Beethoven, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Handel, John Dryden, Madrid Crusaders, Mary Angela Douglas, Michelangelo, Milton, Mozart, Philip II)

The life and loves of Felipe II - Anna Belfrage

Scarriet 2020 Poetry Baseball Report on the Emperor Division! Final Results!

Philip’s father, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, raised his son to have “piety, patience, modesty, and distrust,” and though Philip’s Spanish “Golden Age” in art and literature stretched across the globe, Philip’s coffers were always close to empty while defending the Catholic faith against Muslims to the south, and Protestants to the north—with a relatively small population under his rule.

How did Philip afford the Crusaders?

How was Philip able to lure Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel onto his pitching staff?

The published motto of Philip’s team, “If in my thought I have magnified the Father above the Son, let Him have no mercy on me,” perhaps struck a chord with these devoted and superhuman composers. The Crusaders have neither a famous bullpen nor an expensive, star-filled lineup, but thanks to Madrid’s core of starting pitching, they finished with the third best win total in the league, as champions of the talent-filled Emperor Division—beating out Pope Julius II, Napoleon, Charles X, and Fellini, who populated their clubs with such stars as Homer, Goethe, Coleridge, Hegel, Kant, Hesiod, Cicero, Wilde, Milton, Dryden, Bach, Hugo, Sophocles, Catullus, Heine, Michelangelo, Spenser, Blake, Petrarch, Racine, Auden, Burns, Rilke, and Sappho.

Gerard Manley Hopkins hit lead off for the Crusaders, and led the league with 42 stolen bases. Anne Bradstreet and Aeschylus took low salaries, and drove in runs for Philip’s team; Joyce Kilmer and Phillis Wheatley, who joined Aeschylus in the outfield, contributed just enough, along with Countee Cullen and Saint Ephrem—who hit third, played short, and when he was hurt in late April, was replaced by the poet Mary Angela Douglas (.299 20 homers), who took no salary at all!—and went on a tear, inspiring the team with 14 home runs in May (this was before Mozart and Beethoven joined the club) and she later filled in for Bradstreet at the end of August—and contributed timely hits to provide wins for Beethoven, Mozart and Aquinas.

The Crusaders title is being called a miracle.

Mozart made the difference in the end.  He was 5-4, but won his last 6 starts.  The Rome Ceilings, the team to beat, struggled in the home stretch, going 3-7, while the Crusaders were going 8-2.  In the final series of the season, Milton, ace of the Ceilings, beat the Crusaders and Scarlatti 5-4, bringing the Ceilings to within 2 games of the Crusaders with 3 left to play.  The next night, the clincher was won by Mozart—who had previously shut out the Goths and the Codes. Now he shut out the Ceilings for 7 innings (running his scoreless streak to 27) as he beat Dryden 4-1 in Madrid. With the game tied 1-1 in the eighth, Mary Angela Douglas cleared the bases with a 2 out, line drive double, just past the Ceilings’ first baseman, Michelangelo.

Here are the final standings, with team leaders:

Crusaders  85 69  Winner  Philip II owner, Miguel de Cervantes manager, Team Leaders: Aeschylus 30 homers, Bradstreet .373, Hopkins 42 SB, Handel 20-5, Beethoven 2.21 ERA

Ceilings  82 72 Pope Julius II owner, Cardinal Richelieu manager, Euripides 27, Petrarch .312, Blake 29 SB, Milton 18-11, Milton 2.53

Codes   78 76 Napoleon owner, Alexander (the Great) manager, V Hugo 37, Walcott .315, Racine 21 SB, Homer 19-7, Homer 3.19

Goths   77 77 Charles X owner, Arthur Schopenhauer manager, Sophocles 35, Heine .299, Catullus 32 SB, Chateaubriand 20-12, Chateaubriand 2.74

Broadcasters  68 86 Fellini owner, Claudius manager, Bobby Burns 32, M Jagger .305, M Jagger 20 SB, Nabokov 16-16, Leopardi 2.91

 

Next: Winners of Glorious, Society, Peoples, and Modern Divisions!  Playoff Previews!

 

 

 

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SEPTEMBER LEADERS

September 14, 2020 at 7:25 pm (Amy Lowell, Anne Bradstreet, Charles Darwin, Chuck Berry, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Handel, John Crowe Ransom, John Dewey, Mary Angela Douglas, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Plato, Rumi, Sarah Teasdale, Scarriet Baseball Poetry League, William Butler Yeats, William Wordsworth)

Metro South League 13-15U | Atlantic Baseball Club

HOME RUNS

Yeats currently leads; he plays for the last-place Pistols in the Glorious division. The truth is, pitching wins titles, not home runs, though America’s love affair with the home run is unceasing. The home run is the punchline of everything baseball. It’s a glory, only because the strike out and the weak grounder and the pop up are far more common. The only successful team with two sluggers high up on the leader board are the LA Gamers, managed by Bob Hope; Billy Collins and Eugene Ionesco have been a two-man wrecking crew for Merv Griffin’s team. Laughter and hi jinks live in LA’s dugout; but when it’s all over, will the Gamers prevail on the field?

WB Yeats 38
Victor Hugo 37
Wordsworth 37
Sophocles 35
Billy Collins 35
Dylan Thomas 34
Friedrich Schiller 34
Eugene Ionesco 34
Elizabeth Bishop 32
Sharon Olds 32
Aphra Behn 32
John Donne 31
Bob Dylan 31
Rimbaud 31
Edna Millay 30
Bobby Burns 30
Aristophanes 30
WH Auden 30
Longfellow 30
Rabelais 30
Robert Frost 30

EMPEROR

Rimini Broadcasters Bobby Burns 30, Rilke 23, Anne Sexton 20, Jim Morrison 12, Gregory Corso 8, Mick Jagger 7, Swinburne 6, Sappho 5, Coleridge 3, Nabokov 2, Leopardi 2, Edmund Waller 2
Corsica Codes Victor Hugo 37, Auden 30, Racine 28, Soyinka 12, Derek Walcott 8, Laforgue 7, Callimachus 7, Lati-Loutard 6, Homer 5, Mina Loy 4, John Clare 3
Madrid Crusaders Aeschylus 29, Anne Bradstreet 25, Mary Angela Douglas 20, Saint Ephrem 15, Phillis Wheatley 10, Joyce Kilmer 10, John Paul II 5, Mozart 4, Hopkins 3, Niebuhr 3, Cullen 3
Paris Goths Sophocles 35, Heine 25, Tasso 15, Madame de Stael 11, Chatterton 8, Holderlin 8, Dan Sociu 6, Ronsard 6, Herrick 5, Catulus 3, Herbert 2, Novalis 2
Rome Ceilings Euripides 25, Spenser 20, Michelangelo 14, Milton 10, Pindar 10, Tulsidas 8, William Blake 6, Petrarch 6, JR Lowell 5, RH Horne 4

GLORIOUS

Berlin Pistols WB Yeats 38, James Joyce 25, Ted Hughes 18, DH Lawrence 17, John Quinn 15, T.S. Eliot 10, Alistair Crowley 8, Ford Maddox Ford 7, Gertrude Stein 6, Filippo Marinetti 4, Alfred Orage 4
London Carriages Longfellow 30, Tennyson 28, Browning 19, Paul McCartney 13, GB Shaw 12, Elizabeth Barrett 10, Syliva Plath 8, Geoffrey Hill 8, Larkin 5, Marvell 5, Carol Ann Duffy 4
Florence Banners Friedrich Schiller 34, John Keats 24, DG Rossetti 20, Ben Mazer 13, Christina Rossetti 10, Thomas Wyatt 10, Cavalcanti 8, Dante 7, Thomas Moore 7, Stefan George 6, Glyn Maxwell 6, Shelley 6, Virgil 4
Devon Sun Wordsworth 37, Matthew Arnold 21, Rudyard Kipling 17, Horace Walpole 16, HG Wells 12, Emerson 10, Basil Bunting 8, John Davies 7, Margaret Fuller 7, Richard Steele 5, Joseph Addison 5, Marilyn Chin 5, Joy Harjo 4
Dublin Laureates Aphra Behn 32, Dickens 29, Dumas 28, Sarah Teasdale 20, JK Rowling 16, Ghalib 13, Pasternak 12, John Townsend Trowbridge 11, Oliver Goldsmith 8, Van Morrison 4, Rod McKuen 4

SOCIETY

Westport Actors Hafiz 27, Thomas Nashe 23, Gwendolyn Brooks 10, Amiri Baraka 10, Leonard Cohen 8, Johnny Rotten 7, Audre Lorde 4, David Bowie 4, Marilyn Hacker 3, Lucille Clifton 3, John Skelton 3, Etheridge Knight 3
Virginia Strangers Rimbaud 31, Rabelais 30, Ted Roethke 27, Knut Hamsun 9, Mary Shelley 6, Alexander Pope 6, Pessoa 5, Merwin 3, Franz Wright 3, Weldon Kees 3
Connecticut Animals Edward Lear 24, Wallace Stevens 20, Marianne Moore 15, Seamus Heaney 13, Ferlinghetti 12, Jack Spicer 10, Robinson Jeffers 4, Drayton 4, Ovid 4, Richard Wilbur 3, Mary Oliver 3, Tony Harrison 3
New York War Philip Sidney 21, Apollinaire 18, Harry Crosby 16, Stephen Crane 16, Wilfred Owen 14, James Dickey 11, Shakespeare 9, Howard Nemerov 7, Robert Graves 6, Alan Seeger 5, T.E. Hulme 4, Keith Douglas 4, Brooke 4
Boston Secrets Frost 30, Dickinson 25, Woody Guthrie 16, Kanye West 14, Nathaniel Hawthorne 9, Cole Porter 9, Paul Simon 9, Carl Sandburg 9, Stephen Cole 6, Edgar Poe 5, William Cullen Bryant 3, Paul Dunbar 3, Bob Tonucci 2

PEOPLES

Kolkata Cobras Jadoo Akhtar 29, Vikram Seth 28, George Harrison 27, Gajanan Muktibodh 14, Anand Thakore 11, Allen Ginsberg 9, Jeet Thayil 7, Adil Jussawala 5, Kalidasa 5, Tagore 4, Daipayan Nair 3, Samar Sen 3, Rumi 2
Tokyo Mist Hilda Doolittle 27, John Lennon 24, Sadakichi Hartmann 21, Yoko Ono 10, Haruki Murakami 6, Natsume Soseki 6, Gary Snyder 5, Izumi Shikabu 4, Cid Corman 4, Richard Brautigan 3, Doppo Kunikida 3, Basho 3
Beijing Waves Li Po 27, Tu Fu 24, Karl Marx 23, Brecht 13, Li He 8, Ho Chi Fang 7, Pablo Neruda 5, Gary B Fitzgerald 3, Voltaire 3, Li Young Lee 3, Billie Holiday 3, Bai Juyi 2, Wendell Berry 2
Santa Barbara Laws John Donne 31, Thomas Hardy 20, Walter Raleigh 17, Martial 14, Jane Kenyon 12, Donald Hall 8, Reed Whitmore 8, Gottfried Burger 8, Antonio Machado 6, Akhmatova 5, Horace 5, Donald Justice 4, Ajip Rosidi 3
LA Gamers Billy Collins 35, Eugene Ionesco 34, Thomas Hood 24, Joe Green 11, John Betjeman 10, Noel Coward 8, Ogden Nash 5, Ernest Thayer 4, Tristan Tzara 4, James Whitcomb Riley 3, XJ Kennedy 3, Archibald MacLeish 3

MODERN

Arden Dreamers Sharon Olds 32, Edna Millay 30, Louis MacNeice 29, Stevie Smith 11, Jack Gilbert 10, Louise Bogan 9, Richard Lovelace 8, Carolyn Forche 3, Propertius 3, Jean Valentine 3
Manhattan Printers Aristophanes 30, John Updike 28, Garcia Lorca 17, Andre Breton 11, John Ashbery 10, Kenneth Koch 9, Lou Reed 9, Hart Crane 7, James Merrill 7, Christopher Isherwood 7, Duchamp 7, James Baldwin 6
Chicago Buyers Dylan Thomas 34, Elizabeth Bishop 32, Robert Lowell 22, Edgar Lee Masters 12, Robert Penn Warren 9, Kenneth Rexroth 8, Walt Whitman 7, Duke Ellington 5, Jorie Graham 4
Philadelphia Crash Stephen Spender 26, Allen Tate 22, John Gould Fletcher 16, Franz Werfel 12, Archilochus 10, Donald Davidson 8, John Crowe Ransom 8, WC Williams 6, RIchard Howard 6, Stanley Kunitz 4
Phoenix Universe Bob Dylan 31, Juvenal 29, Paul Celan 22, Anthony Hecht 12, Delmore Schwartz 10, Chuck Berry 10, Maya Angelou 9, Galway Kinnell 5, Larry Levis 3, Philip Levine 3

BATTING AVG

Anne Bradstreet has 25 home runs to go with her stellar .372 batting average, as she and the surprising Mary Angela Douglas (.300, 20 homers) are close to earning a title for the Madrid Crusaders—the Rome Ceilings (4 .300 hitters, Euripides, Petrarch, William Blake, and Michelangelo—whose poetry is awesome, by the way) the favored team standing in their way, with just 10 games to go. Charles Dickens is hitting .354 with 29 blasts to lead the Dublin Laureates, who have the second best record in the league behind the Boston Secrets—who actually have a fairly modest hitting attack: no .300 hitters; Robert Frost leads the Secrets with 30, Emily Dickinson (who missed some games becomes of shyness) has 25, and next is Woody Guthrie at 16. Chuck Berry, lead-off hitter for Steven Spielberg’s Universe, has 10 homers and 20 steals to go with his league-leading .380 mark. William Yeats of the struggling Berlin Pistols not only leads the league in homers, he has a nice .307 batting average. Will he get the MVP? Or will it go to a player whose team wins a title?

Chuck Berry .380
Anne Bradstreet .372
Tennyson .355
Dickens .354
Rupert Brooke .351
Jack Gilbert .345
John Lennon .340
Alexandre Dumas .338
Aristophanes .335
Li Po .334
DH Lawrence .333
Philip Larkin .332
Vikram Seth .332
Rudyard Kipling .322
John Betjeman .321
Mary Shelley .320
Noel Coward .320
Derek Walcott .319
Seamus Heaney .316
Sarah Teasdale .315

EMPEROR

Broadcasters Mick Jagger .308, Sappho .303, Bobby Burns .299, Rilke .286, Bukowski .270, Anne Sexton .268, Jim Morrison .255, Gregory Corso .227
Codes Derek Walcott .319, Racine .311, Callimachus .310, Victor Hugo .280, WH Auden .279, Villon .240, Soyinka .233, Tati-Loutard .230
Crusaders Anne Bradstreet .372, Mary Angela Douglas .300, Saint Ephrem .296, Hilaire Belloc .280, Gerard Manley Hopkins .278, Joyce Kilmer .260, Aeschylus .252, Phillis Wheatley .249, Countee Cullen .239
Goths Heinrich Heine .295, Catullus .294, George Herbert .288, Ronsard .271, Tasso .266, Sophocles .263, Novalis .258, Robert Herrick .255, Madame de Stael .211
Ceilings Euripides .310, Petrarch .307, William Blake .302, Michelangelo .301, Edmund Spenser .250, Ferdowsi .248, Luis de Camoens .244, Tulsidas .243

GLORIOUS

Pistols DH Lawrence .333, Carl Jung .310, Yeats .307, James Joyce .290, Ford Maddox Ford .260, Ted Hughes .255, Gertrude Stein .222, Aleister Crowley .211
Carriages Tennyson .355, Philip Larkin .332, Longfellow .289, Paul McCartney .266, Robert Browning .265, Elizabeth Barrett .262, Sylvia Plath .251, Geoffrey Hill .233
Banners Thomas Moore .289, Christina Rossetti .281, DG Rossetti .279, John Keats .278, Ben Mazer .273, Guido Cavalcanti .270, Stefan George .269, Friedrich Schiller .250, Glyn Maxwell .247
Sun Rudyard Kipling .322, Wordsworth .295, John Davies .278, Matthew Arnold .275, Horace Walpole .266, Margaret Fuller .263, Basil Bunting .262, Robert Southey .260
Laureates Charles Dickens .354, Alexandre Dumas .338, Sarah Teasdale .315, Oliver Goldsmith .277, Aphra Behn .260, Gahlib .258, Pasternak .244, JK Rowling .230

SOCIETY

Actors Hafiz .297, Langston Hughes .288, John Skelton .283, Thomas Nashe .263, Amiri Baraka .248, Marilyn Hacker .243, Gwendolyn Brooks .240, Audre Lorde .212
Strangers Mary Shelley .320, Paul Verlaine .290, Rimbaud .271, Rabelais .266, Fernando Pessoa .255, Roethke .233, Laura Riding .224, Weldon Kees .202
Animals Seamus Heaney .316, Wallace Stevens .301, Marianne Moore .255, Jack Spicer .244, Edward Lear .242, Mary Oliver .237, Robinson Jeffers .229, Lawrence Ferlinghetti .217
War Rupert Brooke .351, Philip Sidney .305, Keith Douglas .271, Stephen Crane .247, Harry Crosby .233, Apollinaire .231, James Dickey .227, Howard Nemerov .218
Secrets Carl Sandburg .298, Cole Porter .295, Robert Frost .277, Emily Dickinson .275, Nathaniel Hawthorne .274, Paul Simon .268, Kanye West .265, Woody Guthrie .264

PEOPLES

Cobras Vikram Seth .332, Allen Ginsberg .313, Samar Sen .288, Jadoo Akhtar .284, George Harrison .280, Gajanan Muktibodh .278, Anand Thakore .271, Jeet Thayil .259
Mist John Lennon .340, Robert Duncan .292, Richard Brautigan .279, Sadakichi Hartmann .277, Gary Snyder .264, Yoko Ono .263, Hilda Doolittle .253, Cid Corman .211
Waves Li Po .334, Tu Fu .311, Karl Marx .254, Bertolt Brecht .251, Li He .248, Pablo Neruda .237, Ho Chi-Fang .233, Billie Holiday .231
Laws Jane Kenyon .300, Gottfried Burger .295, Martial .291, John Donne Thomas Hardy .286, Anna Akhmatova .281, Donald Hall .244, Antonio Machado .242
Gamers John Betjeman .321, Noel Coward .320, Billy Collins .279, Eugene Ionesco .276, Thomas Hood .272, Tristan Tzara .268, Ogden Nash .265, Joe Green .261

MODERN

Dreamers Jack Gilbert .345, Richard Lovelace .306, Carolyn Forche .281, Edna Millay .280, Sharon Olds .277, Louis MacNeice .270, Louise Bogan .260, Muriel Rukeyser .232
Printers Aristophanes .335, James Merrill .302, John Updike .291, John Ashbery .284, Garcia Lorca .270, Andre Breton .245, Hart Crane .238, Kenneth Koch .237
Buyers Jack Kerouac .309, Duke Ellington .301, Elizabeth Bishop .282, Dylan Thomas .256, Robert Penn Warren .249, Robert Lowell .248, Kenneth Rexroth .241, Edgar Lee Masters .240
Crash Allen Tate .311, Stanley Kunitz .278, Archilochus .271, John Gould Fletcher .265, Stephen Spender .251, WC Williams .247, Richard Howard .245, Donald Davidson .209
Universe Chuck Berry .380, Maya Angelou .310, Juvenal .255, Bob Dylan .252, Delmore Schwartz .249, Paul Celan .248, Phillip Levine .231, Anthony Hecht .230

STOLEN BASES

Sarah Teasdale is having a quietly phenomenal year for the Dublin Laureates; she has 20 homers and a .315 batting average to go with her 30 steals. The New York War has stolen the most bases as a team. Gerard Manley Hopkins has been a demon on the base baths for the Madrid Crusaders, who hope to upset the Ceilings in the ancient and talented Emperor Division.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Crusaders 40
Rupert Brooke, War 36
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Secrets 34
Ben Mazer, Banners 34
Richard Brautigan, Mist 31
Sarah Teasdale, Laureates 30
Catullus, Goths 30
William Blake, Ceilings 28
Samar Sen, Cobras 27
John Skelton, Actors 25
Mary Shelley, Strangers 24
Li He, Waves 24
Robert Southey, Sun 23
DH Lawrence, Pistols 23
Carolyn Forche, Dreamers 22
Noel Coward, Gamers 21
Chuck Berry, Universe 20
Jack Kerouac, Buyers 20
Gottfried Burger, Laws 20
Keith Douglas, War 20
Langston Hughes, Actors 20
Heinrich Heine, Goths 20
Mick Jagger, Broadcasters 20
Jean Racine, Codes 20
Hafiz, Actors 19
Martial, Laws 19
Richard Lovelace, Dreamers 19
Elizabeth Bishop, Buyers 18
John Keats, Banners 17
Fernando Pessoa, Strangers 17
Stanley Kunitz, Crash 17
Philip Sidney, War 16
John Ashbery, Printers 16
Jack Spicer, Animals 16
Robert Duncan, Mist 16

WALKS

Isn’t it odd, that William Wordsworth and Robert Frost—who loved to reflectively ramble all over England/New England, and beyond, making a good walk central to their poems—should lead the league in bases-on-balls?

Wordsworth 105
Robert Frost 94
Sharon Olds 82
Gerard Manley Hopkins 77
Nathaniel Hawthorne 72
Ben Mazer 70
Victor Hugo 69
WB Yeats 68
Robert Southey 67
Richard Brautigan 65
WH Auden 64
Anne Bradstreet 63
Aristophanes 62
Sophocles 60
Henry Longfellow 59
Friedrich Schiller 58
Charles Dickens 55
Theodore Roethke 54
John Donne 52
Dylan Thomas 50
Fernando Pessoa 49
Jack Spicer 49

PITCHING

John Ruskin, a spot starter, accumulated just enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. He has 8 wins. He filled in for JS Mill of the woeful Sun in the Glorious division, and Ruskin, who doesn’t throw particularly hard, tossed an uncanny 4 straight 1-0 shutouts. Will we ever see anything like that, again? The Boston Secrets, who have the best record in the league, have 2 pitchers, Plato and Pushkin, in the top 6. Jonathan Swift (22-3) has been a force for the surprise Laureates, and Friedrich Handel (19-5) has been almost as impressive for the surprise Crusaders. Shelley (Florence Banners) has thrown 7 seven shutouts to lead everyone in that category, and Amy Lowell has shocked the world by going 21-5 with a 2.74 ERA and 4 shutouts for the Animals. Rumi (19-9) has emerged as the ace/savior for the Kolkata Cobras—who are in a desperate fight for the Peoples Division crown with the Beijing Waves—Voltaire has put together a good season for Chairman Mao’s club: 17-12 with two shutouts. It’s a long season; Voltaire was 1-3 in April and missed a game because of soreness in his left leg. John Crowe Ransom of the Crash was 0-4, and hurt, and didn’t win his first game until the middle of May; now he’s 15-11 with 3 shutouts and 249 strikeouts. John’s teammate John Dewey is 18-11 with 4 shutouts; Dewey suffered a stretch in May and June where he was 1-7 with 3 no decisions, as the Philadelphia Crash lost 5 times by one run. Many a pitcher in this league has respectable 15-17 win seasons, who could have given up when tough losses were piling up. Then there are pitchers like Plato, who always seem to have it easy: 23 wins, a 2.26 ERA, and a league-leading 349 strikeouts. But the next season is about to begin—the 2020 Scarriet playoffs.  And anything can happen. A bad hop grounder might break your heart. So let’s take a pause, and admire these stats, which hide a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.

Plato 23-7 2.26 5 Shutouts 349 K
Swift 22-3 2.77 2 SO 185 K
Shelley 22-8 2.67 7 SO 341 K
Amy Lowell 21-5 2.74 4 SO 239 K
Handel 19-5 2.44 6 SO 265 K
Rumi 19-9 3.40 3 SO 175 K
Pushkin 18-4 3.58 5 SO 318 K
Ovid 18-10 3.63 6 SO 325 K
Chateaubriand 18-11 2.90 4 SO 259 K
Dewey 18-11 3.44 4 SO 260 K
Milton 17-10 2.42 6 SO 315 K
Wilde 17-10 2.78 6 SO 310 K
Remarque 17-11 3.02 4 SO 242 K
Virgil 17-11 3.11 4 SO 260 K
Voltaire 17-12 3.70 2 SO 175 K
Gandhi 17-14 4.88 3 SO 99 K
Homer 16-7 3.37 3 SO 194 K
Lao Tzu 16-11 2.98 4 SO 255 K
Marvell 16-11 3.07 5 SO 271 K
Hegel 16-11 3.41 4 SO  170 K
Nin 16-15 3.99 1 SO 185 K
Ransom 15-11 3.41 3 SO 249 K
Lucretius 15-15 4.53 2 SO 168 K
Bacon 15-16 3.41 4 SO 241 K
Shakespeare 14-9 4.01 2 SO 214 K
Chaucer 14-10 3.24 6 SO 292 K
Verne 14-10 3.32 1 SO 113 K
Ariosto 14-11 3.03 4 SO 155 K
Pope 14-11 4.05 4 SO 235 K
Goethe 14-12 2.81 2 SO 281 K
Engle 14-12 3.10 1 SO 199 K
Twain 14-12 3.18 1 SO 220 K
Aristotle 14-12 3.33 3 SO 239 K
Dante 14-12 3.41 1 SO 210 K
Tagore 14-13 2.79 2 SO 148 K
Carroll 14-13 3.02 5 SO 281 K
TS Eliot 14-14 3.20 5 SO 260 K
Freud 14-15 3.69 5 SO 288 K
Horace 14-15 4.29 0 SO 176 K
Beethoven 13-5 2.18 3 SO 200 K
RL Stevenson 13-5 3.78 1 SO 89 K
Dryden 13-10 2.55 4 SO 225 K
Poe 13-10 3.19 4 SO 290 K
Hesse 13-12 2.91 3 SO 184 K
Stowe 13-13 2.79 5 SO 298 K
Huxley 13-13 3.44 0 SO 140 K
Moliere 13-13 4.36 2 SO 211 K
Virginia Woolf 13-14 2.99 1 SO 112 K
Atwood 13-14 5.01 0 SO 133 K
Hazlitt 13-16 4.09 3 SO 144 K
Whitman 13-15 2.97 2 SO 232 K
Rousseau 13-15 4.11 3 SO 189 K
Issa 13-17 3.84 1 SO 132 K
Ruskin 8-3 1.44 4 SO 95 K

~~~

Scarriet Poetry Baseball reporting

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