The Basketball Article

Cultural Writing. Poetry. Part of a series of Shark Books reprints of long out-of-print books, THE BASKETBALL ARTICLE features the experimental collaborative essay on basketball by Bernadette Mayer and Anne Waldman. Conceived in 1974 and written the following year, the piece met with an interesting response before ultimately being published in Oui magazine. As the poets write in their original 1975 authors note, "We tried not to make [it] too technical so it was rejected by a group of editors a few of whom thought it 'was a minor masterpiece,' the others 'couldn't tell what the hell was going on' in it." Thirty years later, it seems like the former is more on point; the authors "We begin to dress in red, white and blue, we do not stand up for the national anthem. We always sit next to the opposing team. We distract them. We enter their consciousness. We carry a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets with us. We wear lipstick. We cheer for both teams." A very fun read.