North Carolina Sports Poetry

Poetry Book Reviews
Note: These reviews compiled by Dr. Ron Hyatt. See disclaimer on front page.

Touching All the Bases
Peeler, Tim.  Touching All the Bases, Poems From Baseball.  McFarland & Company, Jefferson, NC, 2000.
This superb book of baseball poems is result of a poet who has paid the price in his preparation and in his productivity.  The writer seeks to reach people through sports poetry and he is very successful in doing so.  He pays homage to well-known baseball heroes and others which he thinks should have been better known.  He reaches back into his youth and brings forth current thoughts, emotions, and dreams.  There are 130 different poems in this excellent work and they are all related to baseball personalities, purposes and hopes.  This reviewer is especially fond of his descriptions of Thomas Wolfe and his love for baseball, but this is a hard choice because there are so many good ones.  Many poems do not utilize the iambic pentameter, but are open and free-flowing.  This work marks the beginning of a major poet in North Carolina and indeed, a major sports poetry writer in the United States.  It is my belief that Tim Peeler has done a marvelous job in sharing the emotions and hopes and dreams related to baseball.
Note:  McFarland & Company, Inc., located in Jefferson, North Carolina, has rendered a significant literary service to poets, the people of North Carolina, and baseball aficionados everywhere.  May the owners tribe increase as well as his publications related to sports in North Carolina.