We have our friend Jim Cummins to thank for this podcast of baseball-inspired poems that comes to us from University of Cincinnati Elliston Project. Jim is the innovator who curated the Elliston Poetry Collection for over three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. He was inspired to record visiting poets and writers and compile the archive during an especially beautiful reading on a spring afternoon by Lucien Stryk. Alas the Elliston Project as it was shaped and steered by Jim Cummins no longer exists. But thanks to his vision, we have a rich and deep archive (800 hours!) filled with the voices of some of our most celebrated poets. Click on the links to hear these great poems:
All tracks Podcast [complete]
Track 01 Introduction
Track 02 Jim Hall reading Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" (1985)
Track 03 Jim Cummins reading Grantland Rice's "Casey's Revenge" (1985)
Track 04 John Drury, "Stadium" (2003)
Track 05 John Drury, "Ghazal of Baseball" (2003)
Track 06 Wyatt Prunty, "Baseball" (1999)
Track 07 Wyatt Prunty, "A Baseball Team of Unknown Navy Pilots, Pacific Theater, 1944" (1999)
Track 08 Robert Pinsky, "Night Game" (1991)
Track 09 Ada Limón, "The Good Wave" (2017)
Track 10 Alan Feldman, "Monday Evening Softball" (1979)
Track 11 David Lehman, "Ninth Inning" (1995)
Track 12 Arthur Smith, "Extra Innings" (1986)
Read Jim Cummin's posts about the Elliston Project here, here, and here,
— sdl
[First posted on the BAP blog April 14, 2017.]