Saucyman: Won't Ya Fly Free Verse

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Won't Ya Fly Free Verse

Congratulations to my brother, Carl Adamshick, on being named the 2010 winner of the Walt Whitman Award. In addition the prestige and major dollars, Carl's book Curses and Wishes will be published in 2010 by LSU Press.

There is a short bio of Carl here on poets.org. Either do to a Midwestern reticence to talk about one's self or a poetic belief that writing a short, interesting Press Release is some how selling out, the bio doesn't tell you all that much.

Instead I'd invite you to read some of the work Carl has done for this blog in the past. Focusing on the etymology of the kitchen vocabulary, Carl's 5 posts might not be award winning poetry but they are good reads.
Metaphor
Saute
Garnish
Consomme
Reduction

Congratulations to Carl on all his hard work and the years he put in to get here - when you work in a room by yourself, never knowing what will become of your efforts, the days are rare when you get recognition for all that you have done.

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1 comments:

Anonymous said...: The one about cantaloupe is a personal favorite (http://www.saucyman.com/2008/08/shouldaloup-willaloup-no-canaloupe.html). Congrats to Carl!; March 31, 2010 2:08 PM

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Basketball

Since the lockout ended, I have been largely silent about the great sport of basketball. Despite Brandon Roy retiring, despite my beloved Blazer’s sprint out of the blocks to a really good start, despite my home team playing a style of basketball than can no longer be described as Van Gundying (Jeff) up the sport’s fluidity.

I don’t know, some interesting developments transpired: During the lockout, analysts and beat writers, the very people who possibly think about professional basketball more than I do, had a light bulb go on over their collective heads and across the league they discovered what everyone else pretty much already knew, NBA Commissioner David Stern is a dick. Over the last decade Stern forced bankrupt municipalities to build new stadiums for billionaires’ new play thing, this heavy handed behavior garnered nothing but praise. The writers sighed and thought eh, “we live in the suburbs, we write for suburban middle managers, our values are if anything anti-urban” - with all the weight that word carries. But needlessly locking out players jeopardizing their tenuous employment in publishing, well that is something that we might complain about except they hate the players more - Oh the conflict.

But mostly I can’t get excited about any team helmed by Nate McMillan. We’ll make the playoffs with a pretty good but not best record, maybe get home court advantage in the first round and then fail to advance. This is true until McMillan proves otherwise, 11 years a coach out of the first round once - this record while coaching some pretty good but not great teams. Along the way Nate will overplay star forwards LaMarcus Aldridge and Gerald Wallace so there is nothing in the tank come playoff time and risk their health. And yo-yo Nicholas Batum’s minutes so the young player becomes a head case instead of developing into a consistent contributor.

So a predictable finish is part of the my own jejune response to the return of the sport of kings (not really, that's horse racing) maybe it's the sweet science (damnit google says that's boxing). My attitude goes deeper than a finish more predictable than one of McMillan's earth toned, triple pleated suits, if the lockout exposed a fault line in NBA coverage it's that broadcasters and writers are now PR agents for the teams - so who is left to advocate for the fan - thank goodness for blogs and the posting cyborg that is named Henry Abbott.

2nd round or bust