♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ SHAQUILLE O'NEAL: In basketball, a fast break is a beautiful thing to watch.

From when the shot goes up, to the box out of a center, to the rebound, to the outlet pass to the guard, the forwards running the lanes... (crowd cheering) SHANE BATTIER: It all happens so quickly, in such a quick game, an instinctual game.

(crowd cheering) EDWARD HIRSCH: Some people, they describe a play in basketball like the way you describe a poem.

It's a moment out of time.

It unfolds with its particular kind of beauty.

All the parts are moving together.

Basketball is a game of motion, a game of grace, a game of physicality.

Basketball is a power game, but it's also a game of finesse, and it's a game of nuance.

And that's when it really becomes art, and that's when it really flows.

And a fast break, I hit upon, was an integral play.

Everyone who plays basketball knows it, but it was something intact.

It begins with the other team shooting and missing, and then you run this play.

It has the circle of a poem.

It begins and ends.

It's not important to me that you know much about poetry.

And even if you don't know much about basketball, you'll still get something from this poem.

ELISA NEW: To test Edward Hirsch's proposition, I talked to three celebrated basketball players: Pau Gasol... ANNOUNCER: Pass the ball up front and let the guy operate.

NEW: ...Shane Battier... (shoes squeaking on court) ...and Shaquille O'Neal.

ANNOUNCER: Ostertag leaning on Shaq... We'd see if poetry could help me better to understand the art of a fast break, and if basketball would help them become better readers of lyric poetry.

Ed, meanwhile, was game to coach a group of pick-up players in a high school gym through his carefully crafted play, while I gathered everyone's reflections on his poem.

"Fast Break: In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984."

A hook shot kisses the rim and hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop, and for once our gangly starting center boxes out his man and times his jump perfectly, gathering the orange leather from the air like a cherished possession, and spinning around to throw a strike to the outlet, who's already shoveling an underhand pass toward the other guard, scissoring past a flat-footed defender who looks stunned and nailed to the floor in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight of a high, gliding dribble, and a man letting the play develop in front of him in slow motion, 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 between them without a dribble, without a single bounce hitting the hardwood, until the guard finally lunges out and commits to the wrong man, while the power forward explodes past them in a fury, taking the ball into the air, by himself now, and laying it gently against the glass for a lay-up, but losing his balance in the process, inexplicably falling, hitting the floor with a wild, headlong motion for the game he loved like a country, and swiveling back to see an orange blur floating perfectly through the net.

HIRSCH: How do you make a single, winding sentence imitate the movement of a basketball play?

It had to be accurate to basketball.

MATTHEW: It's one long sentence, and instead of...

It doesn't just represent what's happening, or present it.

It actually embodies it, the motion and the fluidity.

It's a series of actions that are consecutive.

They're all tied together, that without the first one, there wouldn't be a second one.

Much like a basketball game.

Not a lot of punctuation in basketball.

O'NEAL: The fast break happens so fast, and you don't have time to add periods.

Magic Johnson gets the ball, he gives it to Kareem, Kareem throws it to James Worthy, James Worthy throws it back out-- boom, boom, boom, boom.

It just happens so fast that you have to write it like that.

First, I wrote it all out as one sentence.

And then, the poem went by so fast, that I wanted to draw more attention to the detail and create moments of, of...

They don't stop, but they slow down your attention as you move through the play, and you can see the different parts.

The couplet has a feeling of always twinning or pairing.

NEW: Yes.

HIRSCH: And the slowing it down was important to give the reader time to think through what's happening.

Just, you read the two lines, you kind of see that everything's happening.

You go to the next two lines, everything's still happening, and it just gives that pause.

Yes, I mean, there are so many ways in which these couplets remind us of the game of basketball.

I mean, they pivot really quickly.

There are two sides to it.

You play offense for a short period of time, and then you play defense for a short period of time.

And sometimes the possession is long.

Sometimes the possession is extremely short.

And it's this back and forth that makes basketball an exciting game.

♪ ♪ HIRSCH: And so I got the idea that the couplets would also be the pairing of the friends, and the poem would unfold that way to get both the development of the play, but also the feeling.

So it doesn't all just sweep by you.

As life is always sweeping by us, and poetry... Is trying to stop that.

And time stretches in a way that doesn't happen anywhere else.

But your mind is almost free to a point where everything else in your life doesn't quite exist.

You know, writing a poem where you've given yourself some rules-- you said, "This is one long sentence.

Then I have to write it in couplets"-- there's a set of rules that you are obeying, just as anybody will obey a set of rules when they sign on to play basketball.

I think it's important to pause over that, because poetry has form, like so many other things in the world have form.

And the fun of it is understanding what the constraints are.

Expectations of the form sets up and the fulfillment of those expectations is extremely pleasurable in poetry.

And it's only by setting up the rules and then either defying or fulfilling the rules, that you get that, you get that feeling.

♪ ♪ BATTIER: "A hook shot kisses the rim, hangs there helplessly, but doesn't drop."

>> When I see "kiss" as it relates to basketball, it has to do with being gentle, because you can't... you can't shoot it hard.

You have to be fluid and soft.

So, you know, a hook shot kisses the rim, hangs there helplessly, which means the shot looked good, and, you know, for a couple of seconds, we're, like...

Especially, like, if you're down by one, and Kareem shoots a hook, you're, like...

Uh... Like, are we going to go "aww" or are we going to celebrate?

So, it was a soft shot.

The Lakers haven't won in a long time.

This is our shot to get it done.

So everything has to be done right.

NEW (kisses): So it's like... Yeah, so, like, everything and, like, I finally broke the double team and, you know, Rik Smits is guarding me, but he's not there.

So just let me kiss it up there a little bit.

Oh, this one didn't fall.

So now I know, next time I have to just kiss it a little harder.

Instead of going (smooches lightly), now I have to go (kisses).

But it's also using that figurative language, "kisses" lets us know maybe that there's a kind of human...

Tenderness.

NEW: There's a tenderness and a human feeling.

And "kisses" is such a slow, emotional moment, and it contrasts the whole event with that slow, loving moment.

And it just kind of brings a little life to what's happening and it starts the emotional involvement of the reader.

The idea that the language of basketball hadn't been part of poetry very much seemed like a real opportunity.

Because when it comes to basketball, something I'm very comfortable talking about, so I see key words: "kisses," "helplessly," "boxes out his man," "possession," "strike," "scissoring pass."

So I was very comfortable in reading this.

(laughs): This is player speak right here.

NEW: Yeah, but is there a pleasure in player speak?

BATTIER: Yeah.

It's talking my language.

It's basketball Ebonics.

- (laughs): Uh-huh.

- It's language that's been around.

The terms, uh... "Spinning," "flat-footed defender."

For a basketball player, they create a picture almost immediately.

I never took time to find out where the words came from.

It's just part of my... Well, they're poetic.

Right, they are poetic.

It's just part of my, just part of my everyday... Why "shovel"?

"Shovel" would mean...

Okay, so a shovel motion you go like this.

- Yeah.

- Okay?

A regular outlet you can do two-hand, you can do overhand, you can do a bounce pass.

But shovel to me is, like, you get the ball, "Oh, I see my guard running."

I don't have time to get it and do all this and go like that, so I'm going to just shovel it to him.

Even people who never read poetry love to say "hook shot."

Yes, it's true, it's true.

Right, they love to say "hook shot."

They love to say "lay-up."

And every little thing in a game can start a conversation: "Oh, you should have passed it.

"Just took one more dribble.

He should have took his time on the free throw line."

Like, when you've got a game with 20,000 people, every little thing is a conversation.

And you are, yes, you're raising the question of... or the topic of the delight people take in talking about something so beautiful.

Something that they love, yes.

And trying to match its beauty with their conversation.

Like the game of basketball, Hirsch's poem is formally elegant, and the poet also takes on the challenge of showing us just how expressive, just how poetic is the language of this sport.

But the poem is also funny.

It takes us into a world where every second, someone is goofing up, missing a shot, fumbling, falling down.

The poem's elegance is balanced, or, rather, knocked off-balance by human error.

And the humor that develops around this error gives the poem its warmth of tone.

(laughs): "And for once, our gangly"...

So am I reading that... That's how I've read this poem, "and for once..." HIRSCH: It's absolutely...

It's kind of a joke...

It's kind of a joke.

The guy never gets it right.

There's a kind of a teasing tone, like, "For once you got it right," which suggests that, you know, it's not the only time he gets it right.

It doesn't usually work out for me, but I can imagine what it feels like.

So this time, though... - This time.

- While he boxed out, he boxed out, the ball was in the air... - Kind of like you with the free throws.

Exactly.

(crowd cheering) This this this may be the most beautiful line in the poem.

NEW: Uh-huh.

- Because notoriously, for whatever reason, the centers, or the bigger guys, on every basketball team I've ever played on, are always the lightning rod for criticism.

You know, maybe in a couple of games, we couldn't get our fast break started because Shaq wasn't getting rebounds.

BATTIER: "Get the ball!

You're the biggest guy!

You're the biggest guy out there!"

Reminded me of so many big, talented players that I've played with, who I've yelled at.

Basketball, football, baseball, especially for us fans, it's something that when you see graceful people do it, it looks easy.

We think we can go out and do it because I'm, I'm like one of those guys.

Like, I've seen Michael Phelps swim, and I was, like, "I could do that."

What really made me laugh was, when I was writing it, was "almost exactly like a coach's drawing on the blackboard."

♪ ♪ Plenty of us who grew up in sports had a lot of coaches yelling at us.

You can almost hear a coach yelling at you, "Stay wide!

"Touch the sidelines!

Touch the sidelines!"

HIRSCH: And the coaches are yelling at you because they're diagramming plays on the board, and then you're going out and it's never like that.

And you're not following it.

The coach's drawings become a reality, which is something that doesn't always happen when you're really playing basketball.

BATTIER: The line between success and failure is often one more rotation of the basketball.

It's the inch that you step on the line.

Mistakes happen, and turnovers happen, and missed wide-open lay-ups happen.

It's hard.

It's not like it's something that just perfectly happens.

HIRSCH: Yeah, it's just sort of a miracle it's all working out.

NEW: Because you're not professionals, right?

Exactly, you're not professionals.

- Yeah, and you're playing for the love of the game.

- That's right.

They love it.

- They love it.

- They only do it because they love it.

He tripped, not because he was clumsy, just because he got off-balance.

But he still...

He swiveled it up, looked over his shoulder to watch it go in.

♪ ♪ Boom.

NEW: But "Fast Break" is also a classic elegy.

The poem's dedication-- "In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984"-- alerts us early that something more than a game may be at stake here, that the feelings developing through the poem will find a focus, will concentrate on a pair of friends, and then on the disruption of their friendship.

HIRSCH: So we get to the moment where the two forwards are filling the lane in tandem, moving together as brothers.

Calling them "brothers" is a deeper statement or a different kind of statement.

NEW: Yes, it is.

And I think that this is still unconscious, but at that moment, the elegy part of it starts coming back into your mind.

NEW: Yes.

But there is a feeling now of two guys being separated out, passing the ball between them with a particular kind of connection.

My coach, Dale Brown, used to always say, "You guys have to be attached to the umbilical cord, "especially on defense.

If this guy moves this way, you've got to move that way."

So, forwards... - So you're like twins.

- Yes, you're like twins.

So I'm outside, and I see my brother running, I got to take off running.

I'm not going to say, "Hey!

Hey, why are you running?"

He runs, I run.

To be able to relate to a teammate as a brother, especially on the floor, to work in sync with him, makes a huge difference.

This kind of poetry isn't often considered the world, part of the world of men, because poetry is still often feminized in our culture.

And it just seems to me that men have feelings, too.

And there's male kinship, and this is taking us back to, to some of these, you know, great elegies of men who lose who lose other men and express their love.

The key thing in the elegy is always the precision of the relationship between the person who's writing the poem and the person who died.

And if I can tell you a personal story about that.

NEW: Please.

I'd started teaching at Wayne State University, my first teaching job in my late 20s and early 30s, and I met this guy, and he became my best friend there.

His name was Dennis Turner; he was from New York.

He grew up in Queens, a big Irish family in Queens.

And we started playing basketball together.

And we were in the English Department.

He taught film, but we liked to talk about hoops, and it reminded us of something.

♪ ♪ GASOL: There are actually times that I do go back and think about moments playing in the back of my grandparents' house or playing in the playground of my school, and definitely playing with my dad and my brother growing up.

That was something that was... moments that will always be there, and will always...

I'll always remember and cherish them.

NEW: "Gathering the orange leather from the air like a cherished possession."

O'NEAL: Yes.

Which means, "This is not just a play, but this is..." O'NEAL: This is my life, this is my livelihood.

It's how I take care of my family.

And where I finally have the chance to where I can get to the next level.

So now that I'm here, you really have to cherish it.

One day I took... Dennis had a stomachache.

I took him to the hospital, and when he... by the time he came out, it looks like, it looked as if he had primary liver cancer, which it turns out is what he had.

While we were driving home, we were both stunned.

He said, "If I do have liver cancer, and I die, you owe me a poem."

And I said, "What?"

He goes, "Yes, you owe me a poem."

"Okay."

And he said, "Could you try not to make it too romantic?"

(laughing) I go, "Really?

Really?

You're giving me an assignment?"

That summer, he did get sick.

He turned into an old man in the course of a summer, and he did die, and I felt I had this responsibility to write a poem.

♪ ♪ So the brothers are passing the ball between them, and then I think there's the moment where the guy goes up for the shot, as you do in basketball, but the metaphorical significance of this is not in basketball, which is now from the elegy, is, he's being singled out.

♪ ♪ GASOL: "While the power forward explodes past them in a fury, "taking the ball into the air, by himself now, "and laying it gently against the glass for a lay-up, "but losing his balance in the process, inexplicably falling, "hitting the floor, with a wild, headlong motion for the game he loved like a country."

NEW: I think the only time you use the word "love" is "a game he loved like a country."

Paul... Paul Valery, the French poet, spoke of a ligne donnee, "a given line," where, in other words, after all the things that you had rationally planned, something comes to you as a gift.

To me, that was the gift.

And the reason it was a gift to me-- "for the game he loved like a country"-- is because it seemed to me completely true about Dennis.

Like, when I think of him loving a country, it's, like, him loving his home.

He's feeling like this is the place where he can completely be himself and be aggressive and be competitive, but at the same time, feel that love for the game and that trust for his teammates.

And I didn't understand it until I wrote it down; that is, he loved basketball the way some people love their countries.

And the reason for that is because... - A patriot of the game.

- He was a patriot of the game.

And I think it's because he grew up playing street ball in Queens, and it kept him connected to the neighborhood.

- It was in his blood.

HIRSCH: And it brought him back to something that he believed in and belonged to.

MATTHEW: Well, that, to me, is the line that just jumps out of the whole poem.

It gives me goosebumps, even.

He loves it in a completely organic kind of way, in a way that's built up over a long time, like you would like and love and feel affection towards your country.

Not a patriotic kind of affection, but something actually deeper-- a connection to community, maybe to soil, to family.

And so you played basketball.

You weren't just in this academic atmosphere.

You weren't just with these people who were just teaching classes.

You were also in some other realm.

NEW: Yes.

- And basketball put him in touch with that.

And so this is a poem about a particular friendship, but also that friendship as it's embedded in an institution... - In a male world.

- ...Of male bonding.

- Yes, yes, absolutely.

Sports are amazing because it reveals character.

I don't think it builds character; I think it reveals character.

It's, it's rare that everything's smooth and everyone gets along.

There's always adversity you're overcoming.

There's problems.

There's aches, both mental and physical.

The people you go on this journey with understand what you're going through.

"Taking the ball into the air by himself now and laying it gently against the glass for a lay-up."

"But losing his balance in the process, inexplicably falling, hitting the floor."

It's still a basketball player taking the final shot of a play.

- Yeah.

- But then when you go, "But losing his balance in the process, inexplicably falling," that's the moment where we understand that we have been reading an elegy all along.

And I had him, you know, "Still tumble into the stands for the game he loved like a country."

And then I had, "Swiveling back to see an orange blur floating perfectly through the net" when he gets to make the shot.

Well, there's this retrospective view of the whole play, of...

There's a moment of looking back, as if he is seeing his whole life.

The feeling of the poem is similar to the feeling of that basketball play, and that person lives on in the poem as they would in the time period that exists in the, in the actual motion of the play.

And that's the moment, I think, where everything, you hope, clicks.

"Fast Break" has come to a conclusion, and the life has come to a conclusion.

And it's a kind of rest.

It's... - It's a good death.

It is fulfilled, it is fulfilled.

And something has come to a kind of completion.

I think it was a huge...

It took me a long time to write this poem, and I was also struggling with something.

And I think the poem is a kind of recognition that my friend's life really has come to an end.

♪ ♪ O'NEAL: In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984.

A hook shot kisses the rim and hangs there, helplessly, but doesn't drop.

And for once, our gangly starting center boxes out his man and times his jump... ...perfectly, gathering the orange leather from the air like a cherished possession... And spinning around to throw a strike to the outlet, who is already shoveling an underhand pass... Toward the other guard, scissoring past a flat-footed defender... Who looks stunned and nailed to the floor in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight... Of a high, gliding dribble, and a man letting the play develop in front of him...

In slow motion, 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...

Between them without a dribble...

Without a single bounce hitting the hardwood... Until the guard finally lunges out... And commits to the wrong man...

While the power forward explodes past them in a fury...

Taking the ball into the air, by himself now... And laying it gently against the glass for a lay-up...

But losing his balance in the process...

Inexplicably falling, hitting the floor... With a wild, headlong motion... For the game he loved like a country... And swiveling back to see an orange blur...

Floating perfectly through the net.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪