Summary Of Jack Ridl's Poem 'At Fifty'

The author uses imagery throughout the poem to help you understand how the game was played. “Gathering the orange leather from the air like a cherished possession,” (lines 5-6) simply shows the love he has for this sport. Cherished possessions are things we hold dear to our heart. The player was overwhelmed with excitement as if he had just hit the jackpot. “Swiveling back to see an orange blur floating perfectly through the net,” (lines 33-34) allows the reader to picture the orange basketball floating in the air and when it sails perfectly through the net. Two points,

“Fast Break” is a poem written by Edward Hirsch. It is about basketball, specifically a play called the fast break. Hirsch uses literary devices such as vivid language and hyperboles to express his passion for the game.

The Boys of Dunbar written by Alejandro Danois is a compelling narrative about an inner-city Baltimore high school basketball team who became a national powerhouse from 1981-1983. This is “A story of love, hope, and basketball”. Throughout this essay, The Boys of Dunbar will be explained, reviewed and critiqued.

In his poem “Slam, Dunk, & Hook” (1991), Yusef Komunyaka indicates that the players use basketball as a way to cope with their sorrow. Komunyaka supports his indication by demonstrating uses of vivid imagery and allusion. The author’s purpose is to show the readers that even in a time of sorrow, people must find a way cope and gain strength from their grief. The author writes in an informal tone to address his audience of young students who may have an interest in

But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good” (180). Basketball symbolized hope and development basketball is what helps the author express his message or helps him develop his message. Without basketball and the support Junior received from the students and teachers at the school. The author would not have been able to use basketball to help lead Junior towards his purpose. In a critical essay an interviewer asks Sherman Alexie, “it's interesting that you mention that it [basketball] is as important as it is in inner-city black urban life, because as I was reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I noticed a lot of similarities between the cultures, not only the emphasis on basketball but also motifs that appear in a lot of African-American fiction like racial profiling, marginalization and ghettoization” (James Mellis). James Mellis asks Sherman Alexie about basketball and why basketball is really emphasized in this novel. Basketball is really emphasized in this book because symbolism is used to communicate a message to readers and it was also helped to lead up to the main message. Without basketball being used to communicate the message to readers it would have been harder for Sherman Alexie to carry on the message of the book to

“Ex-Basketball Player” is a poem by John Updike in which a former high school-athlete Flick Webb’s life has been described. Flick was a high-school basketball star but as he got older he couldn’t live his dream of becoming a basketball player, and instead became an attendant at a gas station, which was the furthest he could go with his career. This poem explains how life changes as one gets older and at times it doesn’t go exactly as we plan it, where Updike exemplifies many poetic devices of imagery, personification and metaphors.

John Updike poem “The Ex-Basketball player” is a form free verse poem written in third person narrator about a young man, Flick Webb who still lives in his past rather than moving forward in his life. Flick Webb who was once a great basketball player during his high school years but now he just “sells gas, checks oil, and changes flats.” Flick is an indeed example towards high school students of what not to be. A person should not cling to one important memory in one’s life but should move further and be capable of doing something beyond. Flick Webb in this poem is a role model, especially teenagers, of what not to end up like. Updike uses certain figurative language effectively to lead the reader through Flick’s life- principal road in town that decides his future, lowly job and his menial habits.

In John Updike’s poem “Ex-Basketball Player” the poet uses literary devices to depict the existing way of life of a once-famous sportsperson. Flick Webb was in before times a gifted athlete on his high school basketball team, and he was commendable of much awe. However, Flick never acquired any other skills to prepare him for a future. Accordingly, he now is locked into an unskilled job and his former glories have pale to all but Flick himself. Updike has created a character that is at this point in time going nowhere and spends most of his time thinking about his former days of glory. Flick dwells more restricted by the past than the present because the past was much brighter for him. Flick’s emotional retreat into his earlier period is exposed

“To an Athlete Dying Young” is an amazing poem that is an ode to a young athlete that did not get to live out the prime of their life because of an unfortunate event that sadly ended their life early. A. E. Housman, the poet of “To an Athlete Dying Young”, was born on March 26th in 1859, and was a Latin professor at Cambridge University until his death on April 30th in 1936. In “To an Athlete Dying Young”, Housman perfectly uses a different point of view, figurative language, sound devices, and a negative mood to tell the story of the poem.

Freedom is one of the human rights, which guarantee by God when he created human equally, each has responsibility for their liberty. Therefore, it makes a lot of arguments around the world, especially in America between the 1800s and 1900s, the dark era of slavery that the slaves have no human rights and treated as properties. At the same time, the 20th century is an evolution of art, illustrious pieces born, some of them considered as typical literary masterpieces. This is the impeccable combination of expressing their feelings through art and poems is a prominent place which included the I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou in 1969 in and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “ Sympathy” in 1899. Both poems accurate the hope of freedom through the image of caged birds which reflects their excruciating childhoods. However, “Sympathy”

Walter Dean Myers novel Hoops is about a young black boy, Lonnie, who dreams of becoming a professional basketball player, "My game is my fame, and I knew it was together" (2). Coming from a broken home and living in a bad neighborhood, Lonnie sees that becoming a basketball player could be his escape from Harlem. Lonnie has a bad relationship with his mother to the point where he doesn't even sleep in her house sometimes. Instead he sleeps in the hotel he works at. While at the hotel one day Lonnie sees across the street that the gas station was being rob, taking this as an advantage Lonnie runs across the street and steals a case of alcohol planning to sell it. The next day when Lonnie goes to basketball practice he is introduced to their new coach, a drunk he meet last night who is involved with a gang. Lonnie refuses to be on the team with a drunk as a coach. Considering Lonnie was the best player on the team, his teammates wanted him to stay, so Lonnie proposes a deal with the coach, a one on one game and if the coach got to five first he would be their coach and if Lonnie got five first the drunk would leave and not be their coach, Lonnie loses. Throughout the novel Lonnie learns new things about the coach he didn't like and by the end of the novel Cal, the coach, becomes like the father he never really met. The purpose of this novel is to show that no matter how many challenges that hinder you to get to your goal, you shouldn't give up and have faith that you will get

The poem, "A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball" by Christopher Merrill is mostly about how to juggle and how the boy juggles a soccer ball. The author uses specfic detail on how the boy was juggling and how he was switching feet while the ball was in the air. The ball was also struggling with the ending with his special move. Throughtout the poem, the author uses similes, touch/feeling ( one of the five senses ) to convey the idea, which is, practice takes time.

In the poem “Fast Break”, Hirsch writes in great depth and detail. Hirsh tries to persuade the readers to believe how wonderful turner is at playing basketball. The title of the poem is called “Fast Break” because Turner would pass the ball to his teammates really quickly, and run down the court fast. Hirsh uses simile, vivid language, and hyperbole to show how sympathetic he is towards the player and the last few seconds of the game.

Coach Carter states that nobody is expecting the players to go to college and that he thinks that it’s a problem that they only focus on basketball. He remains calm at the beginning of the meeting in the library and says that it is about all of them. He encourages the heart by telling them that he sees a system that is designed for them to fail, that only 50% graduate and that only 6% of the graduates make it to college. Furthermore, he states that maybe only 1 student is going to college in the room and that especially for young African American men they will go to prison in that area: 33% of the 18-24 year olds get arrested. Coach Carter encourages the heart on a very personal level by brining in shocking facts about the past and involving their friends and families. When he asks each individual to look to the person on the left and then to the person on the right, mentioning that one of the three will most likely be arrested in the future, he makes his point very clear that he wants to change that and that the players should want to change that. Moreover, he encourages them to look at their lives tonight and at the ones of their parents and ask themselves if they want it better. He mentions that if they do, they should go to practice on the next day and that Coach Carter himself will do everything to get them a better life and to get them to college. By having said that, he enables them to act if they want to change their life, meaning they would come to practice on the next day, or by accepting the standards, meaning they would not come to practice on the next day. The given environment for the young basketball players did not look well, yet the parents of them hoped for scholarships through being scouted at a game, not everybody would get

“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a poem with both explicit and implicit meanings and messages that intertwine. The award-winning author and poet got her inspiration from a group of boys she saw playing pool as she walked by a pool hall one afternoon- during school time. The poem was written in 1960, and the poet was born in 1917; Brooks being middle-aged upon writing, gives an insight to her attitude toward the boys skipping school. She had raised a son and was raising a daughter at the time. However, instead of asking herself “Why are those boys not in school,” she internally questioned “I wonder what they think of themselves?” Brooks stated perhaps the boys thought of themselves as “contemptuous of the establishment.” The reader, having no knowledge of the poet’s background, could infer that teenagers tend to bear a stubborn, rebellious streak that would result in a smug attitude, the