Brand New Season

Poetry builds community. This collection Orenaug Mountain Publishing's second baseball poetry volume demonstrates that in the simple fact that the writers are from around the country with a handful from outside the United States. But it also highlights the connections one can make through poetry in this story.A short time ago we met a poetry contributor named Michael Garry at one of our live readings. In the course of getting to know Michael a little we discovered he had written a book Game of My Life New York Mets: Memorable Stories of Mets Baseball which takes a personal look inside the Mets' greatest moments and most beloved players. While writing the book Michael met a former player named Ed Charles who was originally signed by the Boston Braves in 1952. Charles spent eight years in the still-segregated Deep South playing in the Braves farm system. He wrote poetry concerning baseball and racism. For this collection Michael reached out to Edwin Ed Charles's son to see if he would contribute a piece of his father's to this collection. Thus that connection of Michael to the Charles family is where we'll start our second look at America's national pastime and poetry. Michael kicks us off with a poem he wrote about Ed Charles and Ed Charles's poem about Jackie Robinson who broke the color barrier 15 years before Charles reached the majors follows.From there poets write about ballparks growing up with the game their kids and players. Some contributions in this anthology are about cricket softball and stickball. We didn't want to leave out tributes to any games that included a bat and a ball.