Memoir: Journal Writing
I began keeping a journal, probably something I called a diary, in my late teens, mostly for recording my thoughts and feelings about life as a late adolescent grappling with self-identity. I cannot locate that collection now.
My first attempts at poetry were in an English class at Brooklyn’s P.S. 154 (also known as The Windsor School because of its location in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood). Mrs. Bjornson, I recall, taught us how to write cinquains.
I’ve never forgotten those poetic efforts; though; again, I can’t put my hands on my earliest manuscripts. The experience, however, probably implanted a preference for short forms like haiku, tanka, six-word stories, epigrams, and–yes–cinquains. Additionally, my cinquain awakening probably explains my delight at the recent popularity of so-called “flash” fiction.
Also, my lifelong journal-keeping has probably implanted in me a hoarding of short, meaningful quotations, sayings, and inspirations, the kind that fill Page-A-Day calendars.
The first poem I remember spending painful days constructing produced my teenaged lament concerning the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team relocating to Los Angeles. Into that poem, now lost, I poured my love of baseball and favorite players along with a teenager’s anguish and anger with the ownership that absconded, taking my heroes to the Western Ocean.
A couplet lingers in my brain:
“I still see you, Carl Furillo,
Ajax-armed defending Bedford’s wall.”
Incidentally, I remain a faithful and avid fan of the Dodgers. I never liked or respected the blowhard cheerleading of Tommy Lasorda who managed the Los Angeles team to a few championships. Nevertheless, I understand his sentiment that he “bleeds Dodger blue.”
More importantly, the Brooklyn Dodgers and their early owner Branch Rickey taught me powerful lessons about courage and brotherhood. Against the customs and prejudices of organized baseball, the team signed the most talented player of the decade, an African-American, UCLA All-Star named Jackie Robinson, who made baseball and social justice history before he was forty.
And, the Dodgers provided me with new heroes such as Harold “Pee Wee” Reese, their Kentucky-born shortstop who openly embraced and defended Robinson against the racist sins of other players.
——————————————-
Baseball–a cinquain
Baseball:
a game for men
who remain boys throwing,
batting, catching, sliding, without
a clock.
