Green Grass; Orange and Black Heart: Poems of My Giants

ISBN-13: 9781523666607 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 84 str.

Celeste Johnston; Paul Kocak

Opis

I write about what moves me. This is a perfect description of my love for the San Francisco Giants. They have moved me to tears of joy, tears of frustration, tears of sadness. I have kicked walls in the aforementioned frustration and almost worn a groove in my carpet from pacing as Game Seven of the 2014 World Series unfolded its drama, going to the very last out with the game on the line. I have shouted at the radio during Matt Cain's perfect game such useful things as "Stay Calm " in a frenzied, decidedly not calm voice, as if Matt could hear me from my living room. During Tim Lincecum's first no-hitter I was at my mom's house watching the game and trying to tell my mom what was happening without actually telling her what was happening, superstition in full force at the time. Growing up a Giants fan was not easy, through the 1970s and early 1980s there was always frustration, much bemusement and small pinpoints of joy and my love, given to me by my mother, grew, tempered by failure and moments of joy. A Thrifty's ice cream shared with my dad when Mark Davis, as a Giant, broke his nine game losing streak, before he went to San Diego to become a Cy Young award winning closer. I remember in the mid-1980s during a particularly bad season I taped a piece of notebook paper to my dresser with the handwritten words. "The San Francisco Giants...Someday..." A heartfelt wish that someday, somehow, my Giants would be good, good enough to win, a team to make me proud to be Orange and Black. Those days are blissfully, joyfully here now and this small volume of poems and a small unfinished excerpt celebrate these times that have filled my heart. With apologies to Will Clark and Robby Thomson and Dave Dravecky and the earthquake ravaged World Series of 1989 and the 2002 Giants of Barry Bonds, Jeff Kent and Robb Nen and that amazingly talented team that played valiantly and broke our hearts yet again, the only other Giants teams that have reached the World Series in my lifetime, I begin my poetic journey when hope began once more to whisper possibilities of glory, when in 2008 a young, twenty-three year old kid took the mound and the baseball world by storm. Tim Lincecum with his poetic motion made us think anything was possible and before long it was. Three World Series trophies now grace the concourse at AT&T Park. He and Buster Posey and Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, all kids from the farm, have given Giants fans so much, more than I could have ever dreamed of when I wrote on that notebook page all those years ago. I write about what moves me and I hope in some small way these poems will speak to that joy the Giants have given me after all these years.