Sporting Muse

Published author and poet Don Johnson is an English professor at the East Tennessee State University, in Johnson City. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments      Preface      Introduction      1. “Who the Hell Are You, Kid?” Language, Nostalgia and Identity in the Baseball Poem      2. “End-Zones Scored with Darkness”: The Football Poem      3. Courtly Love, or The Sound of One Hand Shooting: The Basketball Poem      4. Pulling Together: Women’s Sports Poems      5. Small Balls, Microcosmic Courts, and Squared Circles: Poems about Golf, Racquet Sports, and Boxing      6. The Fat Man and Other Spectators: Poems about Fans      Wrap-Up      Chapter Notes      Bibliography of Primary Works      Bibliography of Secondary Works      Index

“Johnson brings considerable scholarship and passion to his subject...he provides some useful distinctions among many sports...he provides quite a lot of specific examples of first-rate practical criticism, always in a graceful, lucid style. Not only is there a scholar behind these words; there’s also a fine writer...a rare combination. Johnson’s appeal, like that of all good critics, is at the same time analytical and intuitive”—Booklist; “insightful...supremely invitatory...valuable”—Aethlon.