Frank Barone/eFrog Press /2020/76pp/IBSN: 9781946075123
… Toss a few of these words onto a piece of paper
or choose some you can find in your journal
and start to practice with them
until they begin to work together as a team
move with rhythm across the page.
And if you can see or hear a metaphor
as it surprises you in its flight toward your imagination,
grab it, jump high, and slam-dunk its message
about beauty or joy or love of writing poetry
this game we play for fun with our friends.
“Let’s Play Poetry,” ll. 10-19
Frank Barone was many things: lover of family, teacher, writer, poet, sports fan, amateur athlete. He seems never to have been still. He craved motion collegially and aesthetically as well as physically. As poet, he loved to watch his words “begin to work together as a team.” To “move” in concert “with rhythm” across a page. To watch them “play.”
“Metaphor could take flight,” he wrote, surprising his own “imagination” with its inherent beauty and the “slam-dunk of its message about beauty of joy or love.” Endurance” was requisite. And fundamental to everything was his valuation of patience, faith, of productive “motion” – of staying “alive within life.”
I had never heard of Frank Barone (except – yes, I know – as the sit-com curmudgeon played by Peter Boyle: they weren’t the same!) until The Poetry of Sport and the Sport of Poetry came across my desk. I began leafing through it and soon was transported back to the time when I, too, played outside all day, read poetry inside when it rained (or snowed), and savored the sounds and images of words. I always wanted to read each poem aloud and always tried to find someone to listen (to poem after poem in my childish voice) – usually a futile search.
Golf is the cover-illustration theme of The Poetry of Sport, and golf is in these poems – also basketball (“I can still hear the ball swish through the nets”) – baseball (“the loveable Dodgers of Brooklyn”) – “catch” (“an exchange of gifts between fathers and children / with every toss and catch / catch and toss … and catch”) – even the game of “tag” – and a vivid memory of “Stickball” played on city streets “with just the handle of a broomstick and a pink ball”: “we only played for the love of the game / and because our young bodies needed to run…”
I love this book, and this poet.
He reminds us that poetry is forever alive because of what poetry (and only poetry) can “do”:
Poetry Can Do That
By Frank Barone
Teachers and writers always tell us,
“Write what you know.”
Good advice, of course.
But I would add a few more categories
to help young poets find the words
to fill the blank pages of their writing journals
so the lines will crawl with ideas
show pictures, paint scenes,
and sparkle with surprise and wonder.
Young poets can write not only about eye-catching sights
like a sunrise or sunset
but also poems about a child’s tears
teenage loneliness
skinned knees and bruised feelings
the rage of rebellion
the loss of friends and scars from abuse.
They can write poems as big as a mountain
or as small as a spider
as wide as the horizon
or as skinny as the string on a kite
poems as scary as a monster
or as gentle as a whisper.
I would suggest that young poets
can write about what they don’t know
as a way to make sense of the world around them
or to understand what they may find hard to accept.
Writing can do that.
It can help us to sort through mixed feelings
or to bring some order out of chaos
and harmony from the madness surrounding our lives.
Most of all, writing can be a pleasurable activity
a challenge to play with words
and at the same time struggle with them
until all the lines, shapes, colors,
figures, actions, and emotions come together
to contemplate this creative act born of love
and of the desire to share that love with others.
Poets can do that.
They create, then share their art
so we may see this world and ourselves more clearly.
Poetry allows us to slide open the window of our imagination
to see the beauty of metaphor
hear the cadence and rhythm of language
and to breathe in the fresh air of hope.
Poetry can do that, and more.
Frank Barone was born in the Queens borough of New York City on January 30, 1929. Educated at St. John’s University and St. Mary’s Seminary and University, he devoted his career to teaching students – and his life to his family, his students, his church, and literature. He died in his adopted city of San Diego on May 29, 2024; he was 95 years old.
***
Reviewer Mary Biggs is a retired English professor, and has written numerous short stories, essays and articles, and a book on contemporary American poetry. Mary has also served as an editor and consultant on several literary magazines and a legendary small press, The Spirit That Moves Us, for which she co-edited two collections of new fiction and poetry.
