Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 12:50 pm
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.
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.