Paul Blackburn, '7th Game: 1960 Series'
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Paul Blackburn performed his poem “7th Game : 1960 Series,” which had been written in 1960, on or near the first day of the 1971 baseball season, during a reading he gave at SUNY Cortland. The poem was later republished in Blackburn’s Collected Poems (here is a PDF copy). The New York Yankees (Blackburn’s team) were heavy favorites in their series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and vastly outscored the underdogs in the seven games. But the Pirates won on a home run by a light-hitting second baseman in the final at-bat of the final game (what we now call a “walk off”). As Blackburn introduces the poem, the Cortland audience laughs; listeners to the audio-only recording now might be confused by this, but we think you can safely guess that Blackburn had just put on his Yankee cap.
November 22, 2012
Nada Gordon
'I Love Men,' the Flarf Poetry Festival at the Kelly Writers House, February 8, 2007
There are so many fantastic events catalogued on PennSound, but one that I find myself coming back to time and time again is the 2007 Flarf Poetry Festival at The Kelly Writers House. And I’m not the only one — PennSound Podcasts featured the event in an episode, and PoemTalk featured Sharon Mesmer's “I Accidentally Ate Some Chicken and Now I’m in Love with Harry Whittington” back in 2010.