Delmarva Today 4-29-22
Harold’s guest is poet Adam Tavel. This is Part 1 of a two-part series discussing Adam’s new book of poetry, Green Regalia. Adam is an award-winning poet and the author of four previous books of poetry. A professor at Wor-Wic Community College in Salisbury, Maryland, Adam also directs the Echoes & Visions Reading Series. The poems in Green Regalia explore three main themes: ecology, the human body, and the cycle of grief and renewal. His work expresses both a contemporary and personal point of view of these themes. Part II of my interview with Adam will follow in a few weeks.
The following poem, “Jesse Owens Races a Horse in North Dakota, June 22, 1945” is an example of his work and is the poem that begins our discussion.
The drunkest fans slosh beer to watch it stream
across the stands. By the bottom of the fifth
it breaks a hundred on the Bismarck field
where players wilt and shuffle off, morose.
The promoter’s dented bullhorn gleams:
today his thoroughbred, splendiferous
Prince Martin, makes history. Owen’s heels
still ache from racing outfielders whose boast
before the game was they’d take his golds like toys.
Each time he won he hustled silently
back from the dandelion patch to stretch
and go again. No one saw him later retch
behind the dugout. The horse wins easily.
The PA booms let’s hear it for the boy.
Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games. Afterward, the entire Olympic Team was invited to compete in Sweden, but rather than join them, Owens came home to take up endorsement offers. As a result, US athletic officials stripped him of his amateur status, ending his career. Unable to find work, he took up menial jobs including gas station attendant and playground janitor. For cash, he raced against amateur baseball players, and horses. He always won against the ballplayers and almost always against the horses. So, why did the horse win the 150-yard race against Owens in North Dakota? And how should we read the last line of Adam’s poem let’s hear it for the boy? Tune in tomorrow morning and listen to Adam discuss this poem and others.