Fast Break

"To an Athlete Dying Young" by A.E. Housman (1896)

Another elegy using athleticism as a kind of antidote or contrast to death. Housman also brings vertical movement into the poem, describing two separate occasions when young men lift the athlete to their shoulders: after his great victory in sport, and at his funeral procession.

"Elegy for Jane" by Theodore Roethke (1953)

Roethke’s elegy for his student poetically addresses the idea of grief circles, as he struggles to define his role as a witness to life and death and most of all a mourner of a girl’s lost promise.

"In Memoriam A.H.H." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1850)

One of the best-known elegies in English on the death of a close friend, Tennyson’s poem explores the three stages of elegy: grief, praise, and conciliation. Tennyson uses form to enact his life intertwined with his friend’s life: A chiastic, or mirrored, rhyme pattern echoes their mirrored association, while cross alliteration and internal rhyme knit lines together.

"Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" by James Wright (1990)

American poet James Wright explores different emotional sources for the rituals enacted in American team sports. The brotherhood and transcendence found in “Fast Break” does not come for the football players in Wright’s poem.