Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

[RyanChristiansen]

The poet James Wright was born on December 13, 1927, in Martin's Ferry, Ohio, in the middle of the Ohio River Basin where pro football started.

Wright's 1959 poem "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" is about our relationship with the game. During an April 17, 1968, appearance at San Francisco State University, Wright talked about the poem. I've transcribed from the audio of that appearance, and here is what he said:

In this little place in Ohio where I grew up, football was very big. There are many reasons for that, I think. It was along the Ohio River in southern Ohio and there are many rural areas right around this vicinity, but right along the river there were many factories. Now, if factories are put up in a place where there is coal--there was coal there--to fuel the factories in one way or another, and there was water power, so naturally, as everybody knows, if you have coal and water power and electricity and factories, something else becomes necessary.

It isn't perhaps man's place in nature that is discovered then, it's the place of Greeks and of Hungarians and Negroes and all sorts of other people necessarily appear. Many people poor people came from Europe along that Ohio valley to work and they had children, as the lower classes have been known to do from time to time, and some of those boys, well, they became good football players.

Why is that? One reason, I suppose, was to be able to get out of that hole, and many of them did. Lou Groza, who was in my high school, is now the world's greatest placekicker. Well, maybe that's not such a great thing to do from the viewpoint of eternity, but he did get out. He made it all the way to Cleveland.

Well, back there this was an intense experience. Every autumn everyone would go back to school and there were good football teams in that whole Ohio valley, and sometimes the football games themselves became so intense that I came to realize afterwards there was some kind of dark, strange thing going on--I don't know quite what. It's very touching. It has to do with--I don't know--I suppose the poem is a kind of a football fight song. And you remember the football fight songs, or if you went to high school at a place where the people played football and when they would sing, you know, Hurrah for John Jones Junior High / It's the best junior high in Toledo / It's colors are purple and white (boom! boom!) / Purple is for valor and white is for fight! fight! fight!

Well, we were all young, okay, and we didn't ask to be born, either. We were all kids 15 years old and (he reads)...

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home,
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.


REFERENCE

Wright, James. 1968. James Wright: April 17, 1968: The Poetry Center presents James Wright, reading poems from his collections 'The Branch Will Not Break' and 'Shall We Gather at the River'. Performed by James Wright. San Francisco State University, San Francisco. April 17.


Although this poem isn't about professional football, it is about football--Ohio River Basin football--from the point of view of someone who grew up in that place.

For me, the key stanza is "Therefore / Their sons grow suicidally beautiful / At the beginning of October / And gallop terribly against each other's bodies" - because it speaks directly to why we continue to watch and play this game even as we learn more and more about why this game is in many ways suicidal for its participants. Football is, after all, beautiful and worth preserving.

[sheajets]

Very well put

At this exact time, right as when we embark upon the dog days of summer...the training camps open, the long pre season begins (first game tonight actually, the Hall of Fame Game) my thoughts turn to September. Week 1. It's almost a national holiday to me now. It's like when summer turns and starts to die, me and every one of my football obsessed brethren start to come to life. You think ahead to the autumn glory. To the pending earth shattering developments...surprise teams, disappointments, injuries, the coming controversies...just the anticipation. The holidays and how football plays into it. Just that weekly build up...something to look forward to and celebrate over with friends and family.

To me football (collgiate and the pros) is at the heart of a collective reawakening of America that begins every September. Right now we're all just stewing in our own juices of a muggy summer. We've checked out mentally, we're on vacation, we're dozing in our hammocks, at the beach. But it won't be long until everything starts to stir again

[RyanChristiansen]

It's like when summer turns and starts to die, me and every one of my football obsessed brethren start to come to life. You think ahead to the autumn glory. To the pending earth shattering developments...surprise teams, disappointments, injuries, the coming controversies...just the anticipation. The holidays and how football plays into it. Just that weekly build up...something to look forward to and celebrate over with friends and family.

To me football (collgiate and the pros) is at the heart of a collective reawakening of America that begins every September. Right now we're all just stewing in our own juices of a muggy summer. We've checked out mentally, we're on vacation, we're dozing in our hammocks, at the beach. But it won't be long until everything starts to stir again

We are kindred spirits. For me, football is more than just rules, results, statistics, and all-time lists. There is the story of football, and there are stories within football, and in many ways football is a proxy war that keeps us from fighting one another. We need football more than we think we need it.

[Rupert Patrick]

It's like when summer turns and starts to die, me and every one of my football obsessed brethren start to come to life. You think ahead to the autumn glory. To the pending earth shattering developments...surprise teams, disappointments, injuries, the coming controversies...just the anticipation. The holidays and how football plays into it. Just that weekly build up...something to look forward to and celebrate over with friends and family.

To me football (collgiate and the pros) is at the heart of a collective reawakening of America that begins every September. Right now we're all just stewing in our own juices of a muggy summer. We've checked out mentally, we're on vacation, we're dozing in our hammocks, at the beach. But it won't be long until everything starts to stir again

We are kindred spirits. For me, football is more than just rules, results, statistics, and all-time lists. There is the story of football, and there are stories within football, and in many ways football is a proxy war that keeps us from fighting one another. We need football more than we think we need it.

I think it was former football player turned author Michael Oriard who said that football is a microcosm for Manifest Destiny, for military campaigns that are fought without guns and planes and tanks and ships, where you try to hold your land whilst you attempt to move forward and capture enemy territory. Both sides take turns until one side reaches the other side's final perimeter, and once the war is over, one side is victorious and the dead are instead measured in torn hamstrings and twisted ankles and the occasional knee injury. And over the course of three or so hours, it provides great drama for those who watch.

[RyanChristiansen]

I think it was former football player turned author Michael Oriard who said that football is a microcosm for Manifest Destiny, for military campaigns that are fought without guns and planes and tanks and ships, where you try to hold your land whilst you attempt to move forward and capture enemy territory. Both sides take turns until one side reaches the other side's final perimeter, and once the war is over, one side is victorious and the dead are instead measured in torn hamstrings and twisted ankles and the occasional knee injury. And over the course of three or so hours, it provides great drama for those who watch.

LOL. Or in the words of the great comedian George Carlin: "In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line."