More Thoughts on Kobe Bryant's Retirement Poem

We wrote about it just the other day and now we're back with a little more gusto: Kobe Bryant's "Dear Basketball" (the poem announcing his retirement) is gaining traction. Learn more about what commentators have to say and about their recommended reading lists for Bryant, at NYT.

The students in Nick Twemlow’s college poetry workshop could be surprised this week to be reading the debut work of an enigmatic new voice: Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Earlier this week, Bryant announced he would be retiring from professional basketball after 20 seasons. But rather than releasing a statement through a publicist or holding a news conference, Bryant revealed his decision in 52 lines of free verse.

Slam poetry suddenly had new meaning.

[...]

“It’s not the worst poem I’ve ever read,” said Twemlow, a poet and professor at Coe College, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, whose gentle half-praise of Bryant’s effort echoed the sentiments of many other writers.

Bryant may not be Shakespeare. But for all the inelegant lines and ingenuous sentiments in his poem, poets were intrigued and charmed that Bryant, one of the world’s most famous athletes, would choose the form.

It was an exciting rare moment in which a poem entered mainstream culture.

“One thought I had initially, without even seeing it, is that it’ll be the most widely disseminated poem of the last decade or in recent history,” said Jane Yeh, a poet and lecturer at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England. “No one reads poetry.”

Instinctively, poets and writing professors have begun to ponder the Bryant poem, and critique it, just as they would the work of a peer or student. Many had the same first question: Why? Twemlow said he often poses the question to his own students, who tell him that poetry — in which the rules of language and narrative can be subverted — represents a more comfortable vehicle than prose for expressing exuberant emotion.

“That is how you break up with the love of your life, right?” said David Gordon, a creative writing professor at Pratt Institute. “If you think of someone breaking off a 30-year marriage, they don’t Instagram it.”

Continue at NYT.