I love me some Bill Knott, who had a great blog awhile back (but now it’s defunct). UPDATE:not defunct, Bill Knott’s blog just moved to blogspot. What he seems to be describing, is Brett Favre’s tenuous grasp of team, player life expectancy, and death of commercial spots. The poem is called, “The Answer,” and I think it could be considered the answer to any Packer’s fan’s muted cry of “Why?”
The Answer
By Bill Knott
Leaving the house,
the house will be
left completely,
from cellar to
attic my absence
entire.
Do I enter the world
the same,
my presence felt
from cloud
to ditch?
Only in departure whole.
Arrival
is always partial.
Couldn’t you see that last stanza on a sign at Lambeau Field when the Vikings visit? “Only in departure whole./ Arrival/ is always partial.” Even the stanza order, where the first stanza describes how he will leave, the second stanza how he arrives a second time (and now for Favre, a third time), and then a realization that understanding your life and death (in athlete years) is the purest form of knowing yourself.
Favre apologist and Shakespeare quoters would rebut, “to thy own self be true,” and I’d say take the money and run. Then again, maybe that is what Favre is doing.
… at my age i can appreciate Favre’s desire to play another day, to not fade away into his night of . . .
… thanks for posting my poem, always honored when anyone quotes anything of mine!
. . . like Brett, i’m not quite “defunct” or at least i’m trying not to be—this is my current blog:
http://billknottpoetry.blogspot.com/
…
whoops, sorry to think you were such. i’ll update the entry.
i think as fans we just get wrapped up in thinking these guys are a part of us, and we don’t want them to be sullied by wanting to hold on to long (at least that’s the angle i was taking as i looked at it through the prism of your poem).
but the fact is he may do more harm to the team/fanbase then not (record holder in INTs, new playbook, didn’t practice in training camp, already rumblings from vikings wishing they had stuck with tavaris).
whereas us writers and poets, we’re supposed to get better with age, right?
anyways, long time fan, thanks for coming out!