Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhym...e, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The language of the game is interesting. You can think of the pauses as caesuras, breaks between the lines. As a poem the game is ...composed of a number of short lines representing the pitches. The number of lines per batter form a stanza. Then there is a space. Sometimes the stanzas become breathless, rushing full paragraphs that build rapidly on each other until the poem-inning explodes. The poem lives for this sudden blossoming out of prosodic regularity. Should someone make a computer analysis of baseball prosody, I believe that they would come up with something close to the prosody of some great American lyrical epic, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, let's say, or Doc Williams's Patterson.... The game is definitely an epic ... formed of many lyrical moments dependent on silences for their effectiveness. An unfolding story punctuated by brief emotional swellings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For public opinion does not admit that lofty rapturous laughter is worthy to stand beside lofty lyrical emotion and that there is ...all the difference in the world between it and the antics of a clown at a fair.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity to... history, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of our major professional sports, golf alone retains the lyrical innocence with which it began centuries ago among Scottish herdsm...en slapping the gutta-percha ball around the bonny banks. Golf alone, despite huge purses, has remained immune to the violence and vulgarity that have turned other sports into spectacles of sanctioned mayhem. The game, as Andrew Carnegie believed, is an "indispensable adjunct of high civilization." No other group of professionals is self-ruled by an honor code in which players call penalties on themselves. Golf etiquette prevails. Can football etiquette or hockey etiquette be imagined? Golf has no Charles Barkley, who has spit at fans. It has no John McEnroe, the obscenity-shouter, nor does it have enforcers, late-hitters, or self-absorbed clods who moan that they aren't paid enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... a phallocentric culture is more likely to begin its censorship purges with books on pelvic self-examination for women or books... containing lyrical paeans to lesbianism than with See Him Tear and Kill Her or similar Mickey-Spillanesque titles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other han...d he had a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a room, and one person or two persons saluted many people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »