Love & Tribal Baseball
by Susan Andrews Grace
Ottawa, Buschek Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-894543-41-5, 82 pp., $15.00 paper.

This intriguingly titled book is Susan Andrews Grace's fourth publication. But there is much more to this collection than its title. Grace writes in a kinetic fashion that is firmly under her control. It is not this kinetic form that first greets us though. Instead, we are provided with the promise of high voltage about to be released:

They play until nightfall ° small
children bat until they find
tribal love, greater than any god,

original sin incomprehensible
and yet there is the fall:
all the world before them-- (7)

which it finally does in "Choosing a Team":

The tribe gathers for weddings & anniversaries, ballgames
played hard
               against time
                                        running
out
               uncles
and nieces and great nephews and fathers and mothers lobbing
                    softballs
                    softly (13)

The concept of "tribal love," as exemplified in these passages, appears to be synonymous with family gatherings, perhaps in some rural setting, where the teams would be drawn and the positions allotted. At the same time, an ominous feeling arises. Why the word "lobbing" where "throwing" would be expected, "lobbing" the term one associates with a grenade rather than a softball? This mood begins with the Prologue, where "tribal love" seems to merge with eroticism and a coming-of-age--the biblical concept of original sin somewhere out there on the playing field, where the fall in the game is equivalent to the fall in the garden. Is this also the fall into adulthood, "against time running out"? This raises the spectre of death as an endgame--or is it one of the players on the field, something always in play?

Sin continues into "Outfielder":

Unlikely larch amid poplar, aspen and brome grass--
           Irish grandparents buried in communion with dead Germans
           a spot reserved for open secrets: shame of ancestry
           less than original
           sin
                                                                      prepared furrows (36)

The "prepared furrows," set out in bold print, has become a convention of the text by this time. Another convention is revealed on the next page, 37: "catch hold first source / their parents † truth," where the symbol "†" is more accurately in the shape of a small iron cross. Other than their providing an interesting visual, there appears to be no discernible pattern to the placement of this and the raised circle mark. For the latter, which presented itself in the first example, it could possibly have been that this mark was intended to replace the comma. However, commas themselves appear throughout the text diminishing this possibility.

"The Dugout" begins:

Liminal pleasures, suppers ° refuge of sheltering bench
time out, hot sun, enamel dipper slippery cold
well water down the throat.

                                                           sun in the eastern sky, the world all before them

Home is a baseball construct. (53)

"Liminal" in this instance refers to the passage from childhood into adulthood. If the world is "all before them," then anywhere can be "home." Therefore, the concept of a fixed location called "home" is only a "baseball construct." Notice the predominance of 'l's and 'p's. The second line is an incredible merging of assonance and consonance, creating a line that cries out to be sung like those old English folk songs found only in the Appalachians. "Copper Kettle," anyone?

Susan Andrews Grace has portrayed life as a baseball game played within the confines of the tribe. Slowly, the "tribe" has grown from a family reunion until it encompasses the world--taking place in whichever community one finds oneself at the moment. Along the way, we have encountered infancy and innocence, lived in a liminal experience looking back at the games we played, emerged into adulthood and then old age and always along the way accompanied by that vague spectre called death. Grace has shown a profound grasp of the provisions of poetry splaying them out upon the pages of this book like so many ciphers, like so many landmines that explode within our skulls as we trip upon them. When they do, we are grateful for the experience.

John Herbert Cunningham is a Winnipeg writer. He reviews poetry in Canada for Malahat Review, Arc, Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead and The Danforth Review, in the U.S. for Quarterly Conversations, Rain Taxi, Rattle, Big Bridge and Galatea Revisits, and in Australia for Jacket.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

Back to Reviews Index