Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
The following is work by Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, who lived… until he died in 2018 at age 103.
Young Poets
Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
This poem was posted earlier this week on a Facebook page group hosted by a schoolmate of mine who currently teaches English creative writing to students in Denmark.
The same can be said for any writer. Poetry can get pretentious and pompous for those writing it, and most of us – especially those who currently are or once were teenage English students – felt like we had to get fancy, had to rhyme, had to find the most unique words to describe nature, love, or people.
Parra spent a lot of his time as a poet reminding people to lighten up.
Parra’s words are practical for opinion columns, too.
Do I need a hot take? No. It’s still a compulsion to write a hot take, though, because like trying to write poetry in high school, I feel like I have to get fancy.
Do I often discuss issues and share thoughts outside the realm of sports and attempt to tie these thoughts back to sports before hitting the send button to my editor? Absolutely. It allows me to alleviate a lot of discomfort I feel when I begin writing this column.
Sometimes I tell you I’m shamelessly doing it in the middle of… doing it.
Good thing I’m not usually in front of another human being during this process acting like I’m the first person to experience this. If I were, anyone present would justifiably club me like a baby seal.
I’ve decided, instead, to tell myself “(I) have to improve the blank page” when I write opinion columns.
I’m already using this approach when I write feature articles. In fact, I’m much more comfortable working on feature articles. I plan on doing more than one every three or four months, too.
Sports writers like to laundry list stats to enhance their features because many of them are particularly good at maintaining historical data that comes in handy when they are covering a ballgame.
I, on the other hand, stay as far away from stats as I can unless there is a huge relevance to them, and to my story.
I wrote a feature about Southern Georgia University assistant softball coach Kennedy Krull’s journey from high school softball to collegiate level play, to the opportunity the COVID summer presented moving her to a foray into collegiate coaching after a few seasons at Triton.
No stats furnished nor discussed. None, nessuno, bupkus.
We, instead, talked about the Wawa mega convenience store offering fare in her daily consumption that was better than turning on the stove, and about setting aside conventional paradigms to take advantage of an opportunity usually open almost entirely to Division I softball players before the COVID summer arrived.
Krull even mentioned how the stifling summer heat was just what the doctor ordered to mitigate some of the pain in her battle with lupus in both features I wrote about her.
I’ve even written high school basketball Player of the Year (POTY) features where I only furnished performance data “’cuz I hafta.”
Warsaw’s Jackson Gould and I spent most of our 35 minutes together talking about what we saw on the court in terms of how classy he is, his ability to cultivate strong positive – and very genuine - relationships with his on-court rivals, and his joy when he played Unified flag football each fall. The result was an article about a gentleman whose presence during his award-winning prep basketball season was testimony to this guy realistically on a trajectory to becoming a successful pediatrician and selling that vibe to the readership in turn.
I guess he also “just happened to be” the 2023 Warsaw Time-Union boys’ basketball Player of the Year. I guess we did touch on this… just a little bit.
The blank page when Gould and I sat down that day was the fact he earned the honor. Improving the blank page, however, was the non-traditional approach I took toward the privilege of interviewing him.
I used the same approach preparing my 2021 feature article about Warsaw basketball great Kyle Mangas (currently invited to the San Antonio Spurs’ training camp) who talked to me via cell phone when he was making his bones in Central Europe’s professional basketball league.
Our article was more about giving his best effort at a job (overseas pro basketball player) earning probably about one-third of what he’d likely make entering the business world with his flawless grade point average in 2021.
I hoped then, and still strongly believe now, his feature article would shed light into how Mangas’s passion with little to do with money, the unpretentious lifestyle he adapted, his work ethic, and his character. I believe each of these characteristics continue to be essential ingredients of his current progression in professional basketball back here in the States.
I was very intentional in my effort to leave out numerous accolades and stats in the feature. An additional fun fact: Mangas has starred in his fair share of NBA G-League highlight reels since earning a spot in the G-League.
To this day, I currently have – nor care to have in the future - any clue what his G-League stats are because this stuff is the blank page I seek to improve.
I shall get another chance for a long form feature in next Saturday’s Weekender edition. I have my sights on another high-achieving scholastic athlete whose background has depth beyond his impressive spring sport stats.
Stay tuned.
