Moves and Metaphors

Moves and Metaphors is the marriage of my two favorite passions.

Basketball, The love I grew up with but never left and Poetry, the love that came later in life but will never leave.

Most compliments connected to sports talk about its beauty and its artistry but only apply it visually. They’d call a play or a move “poetry in motion” but never had the words to back up that compliment. In 2018, I decided it wasn’t enough to hear about poetry in motion, I had to put words to it in order to highlight the beauty of the sport.

How can you call a play poetry in motion and not recognize that player as a poet? I believe in every player is a poet, so in every move is a metaphor.

The Moves represent what you see on the court. The crossovers, the dunks, the blocks, the highlight plays.

The metaphors represent what I see on the court. The poetry and poets who are speaking with every move. The players who have their own language and their own story that leaks out so each play speaks for itself. It just comes out as a metaphor because how else would the common viewer connect to a move that seems like hyperbole. To a man or woman who seems more like myth.

This series is my attempt to uplift the game and the players who play it. To put words behind the art we see because there are no poets who have taken the time to translate what’s happening on the court and connect it in context creatively, so I’ll be the first