Coach in Edward Hirsch's Poem Execution Essays

Football was and is a very popular sport in America and has always been a favorite. Erik Fisher plays football because he is great at the sport, hence page 27, “Dad had brought Erik to meet Coach Warner earlier in the summer. Dad had knelt down and held the ball for Erik to drill fifty-yard field goals, one after another, while according to Dad, the Coach’s jaw had dropped lower and lower.” But, Erik played football primarily for and because of the fame. He had never cared about whether he had to hurt someone in order reach the top of the “Erik Fisher Football Dream”. On September 5 (pages 50-94), when Mike Costello dies of lightning, Paul finds Erik and Arthur laughing about how Mike’s hair was singed off. Paul was disgusted. Though Erik and Arthur didn’t kill Mike, their laughter reflects their inner evil and selfish selves. Paul then reflects on his own self and decides to walk a path of truth, unlike Erik. In continuation, Ray Lewis had once said, “Don't walk through life just playing football. Don't walk through life just being an athlete. Athletics will fade. Character and integrity and really making an impact on someone's life, that's the ultimate vision, that's the ultimate goal-bottom line.” Erik never had any character or integrity, whether he played sports or not. On the other hand, Paul did have character and integrity. Paul noticed Erik’s evil actions to get higher and higher up the Erik Fisher Football

In the book Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch, he structure the elegy starting at the funeral home where his son Gabriel lays, he then is remembering all the events form Gabriel’s life leading up to his death. Edward Hirsch uses a three line ten stanza on each page, without punctuation. This is to signify that the starting and stopping of punctuation cannot unpack the hardship of outliving your child. The three line stanzas imply the book’s most painful suggestion that, “The dead are no more than how we remember them”.

Sports Illustrated writer, Lee Jenkins, writes about the impact of a small-town football coach had on his community, before and after death in the article “A Good Man Down.” The author explains the life of Ed Thomas, the head coach for the Apilington-Parkersburg football team in Iowa. Ed Thomas was shot and killed while training his athletes by Mark Becker. Lee Jenkins begins by using very detail accounts to bring out the pathos of the town, bringing the audience to feel emotionally connected to the town of Parkersburg.

My father, Jason Katcher was my Coach for nine years. We have had our ups and our downs. Through all these years of sports there are these unfathomable moments in time that will be frozen in to my mind. One of these moments was for the championship in a football tournament. My team and I needed a touchdown to when the game. I hear the fans screaming, my heart is pounding, the other team is nervous, I look up less than ten seconds left, forty-five yards to go, I look left I look right like I do before every play and then I look at my coach.

Hirsch is having his story told by a player who is presently playing on the court while Komunyakaa seems to have a player that played on the team reflecting back at what he was part of. Similarly to each other, the authors had in mind to create a narrator who describes the team moving together. Even though it was only one person speaking from first point of view, the speakers spoke in the aspect that their teams were one. “I” was not once used in Komunyakaa’s piece but rather the words “we” and “our”. “Glistening with sweat, / We rolled the ball off / Our fingertips.” This sentence from the passage shows there’s no one star on the team that hogs the ball and keeps only to himself, they work together. It’s not a one person show, everyone on team works together and they are all equally viewed as important on the court. Even though Hirsch did not constantly use the word “we” like Komunyakaa, the narrator takes time to describe and pay attention to each team member playing on the court and working together. “Almost exactly / like a coach’s drawing on the blackboard, / both forwards racing down the court / the way that forwards should, fanning out / and filling the lanes in tandem, moving / together as brothers passing the ball”. When thinking of a coach’s plan, the coach has the idea of having the whole team work together to make a plan go well. The passage stating that everything is going to plan like drawn on the blackboards alludes to the audience that the team is working together as one as they should. If the audience does not catch the hint, Hirsch writes for it to be clear that the team was moving together like brothers. They aren’t just teammates on the court, they’re

However, when I read the poem “The Base Stealer” I feel a different type of excitement that’s tense and somewhat stressful. In “A Football Game” the sound devices such as the rhymes and the simple wording make it come off more childlike and entertaining. The lack of rhymes, the free verse style, similes plus more complex wording of the poem “The Base Stealer” make you have to think a bit more to understand exactly what the poem is saying. The words are more dramatic and cause this tense anticipation. The different approaches that the poems took to a sports theme made a big difference in how the poems make you feel and to what age group they would best be suited for.

The author also describes a broader family situation in which everyone gathers to the mother’s house to for games, even her son battling addiction. The mother writes Reilly, “Everyone comes to my house for games… Whatever the joy or drama in our lives, we live and die with the Packers together” (659). The family's’ love for the Packers brings them together for a family night and strengthens their bond. Reilly speaks of these families to appeal to pathos to connect with the audience and trigger similar memories, like eating Thanksgiving dinner during the big game, to further prove his point that sports have an influence on everyday life. The author’s appeals to pathos prompt sympathy and relatability from his audience to prove that sports journalism has a powerful influence on everyday life and is the best because of this

I decided to use former North Carolina basketball coach, Mr. Jim Valvano. On a night in 1993, Mr. Valvano gave a speech that greatly affected myself and possibly many others on an emotional level. He led North Carolina’s NCAA basketball team to a championship in 1983. In 1992, Mr. Valvano was stricken with metastatic adenocarcinoma, which is a type of cancerous tumor that occurs in several parts of the body.

When you die, that does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live and in the manner in which you live.” (Evans) Scott tries to get the audience to sympathize for him and show them a little incite to his life. Another strong use of pathos is when he states “ What you didn’t see in the piece is what’s gone on probably the last 10 days. I just got out of the hospital this past Friday. Seven-day stay. Man, I crashed. I had liver complications. I had kidney failure. I had four surgeries in a span of seven days. I had tubes and wires running in and out of every part of my body. And guys, when I say every part of my body: every part of my body. As of Sunday, I didn’t even know if I’d make it here.”(Evans). Scott tells the crowd this because to inform them how difficult it was to live with cancer and proves that you never know what day could be one’s last. He tells the audience about his struggle in a week and lets them imagine what a struggle over a long period of time is like.

Cancer is a word that most people have been hearing for a long time; always being told how bad it was, and how lucky they were to not have it. One thing that these people seemed to never understand is how scary it really is to be close to someone with cancer. Patrick Swayze went through this frightening time, along with over 53,000 adults; back in 2008 (Cancer.Net, 2015). Pancreatic cancer has many causes, and among them are; smoking, damaged DNA, and their diet (John Hopkins Medicine). Think of Last sentence for this paragraph.

Walt Handelsman uses irony to develop the theme. Handelsman writes, “Too violent! Put football on.” This is ironic, because football is more violent then a presidential debate. Irony is being used in an everyday life situation, causing others to relate. It demonstrates how individuals should loosen up and not worry about the negative aspects of life. Simplifying ones’ life will enable a positive, healthy life.

A.E. Housman was a poet born in 1859 who became very successful during his lifetime. “To an Athlete Dying Young” represents the theme of glory is fleeting by illustrating the point that if a successful athlete dies young, they will not have to worry about their glory of victory fading. They can rest in peace knowing they will be remembered at their athletic peak when they were successful and victorious. They will not have to go through the pain of watching their fame disappear or whither out with time. In this poetic masterpiece, Housman pulls together figurative language, sound devices, and structure to illustrate that glory is fleeting through a

The "A Team"is around an affair of sheerans. In Ed's tune, he sings about a young lady who was poor and went down the wrong way. It instructs us to have confidence in ourselves even at the most reduced and hardest of times. He discloses to us that you don't need to get to the most reduced of lows when you are left with nothing. The "A Group" implies the class of a specific medication that the lady is taking. We ought to be appreciative for what we have, This tune truly reveals to us what it resembles to have nothing and attempting your hardest to get some place.

In the poem, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” by A.E. Housman, there is a standout athlete that is very well known for his achievements throughout his town. He won his town the race and was hoisted home shoulder-high by the townspeople. However, some time later, he is being hoisted home again, except for a very different reason. The standout athlete has passed away and they are carrying him to his grave. He will never get to see the impact he made on the town, nor will he ever be able to see his accomplishments surpassed by someone new. Although, the sadness of his passing is overwhelming, there is some light to the situation because the young athlete died in glory.

Alfred Edward Housman best known for his beautiful and distinctive imagery and lyrical poems wrote often about the life of the young. He created a poem by the name of “To An Athlete Dying Young” and by the title one can assume what it might be about. In poetry, all poems have a mood, tone, and central meaning. In almost all of them, you can tell the narrator's attitude towards the topic that is being written about. The poem is actually about a young man who received praise and glory from his hometown because of his victory race. Even when he passed away he was still being held high. The author had felt like the athlete was lucky to have died young because he was going to be remembered for winning the race, one of the best moments of his life that he shared with others. The narrator additionally felt like the athlete wouldn’t have wanted to see his name being forgotten about so it was best to die young, saying this with his figurative language and imagery.