Table of Contents

• Bodies Built for Game, introduction essay -Natalie Diaz
• In Defense of Allen Iverson, poem -Hanif Abdurraqib
• Bolting into Throat, poem -Patricia Smith
• last summer of innocence, poem -Danez Smith
• American Pharoah, poem -Ada Limón
• Takes Enemy, essay -Shann Ray
• Professional Wrestling Holds, poem -Ashaki Jackson
• He takes me, poem -Paul Tran
• The Hit Man, poem -Stacey Waite
• Psych Ward Visitation Hour, poem -b. william bearhart
• The Wars, novel excerpt -Louise Erdrich
• After Simone Manuel's Olympic Victory in the Women's 100m Freestyle, poem -Lauren Espinoza
• In the outfield, daydreaming, poem -francine j. harris
• The Meaning of Serena Williams: On tennis and black excellence, essay -Claudia Rankine
• Serena Williams Walks, poem -Kwame Dawes
• Boxing Out, poem -Adrian Matejka
• Summertime, poem -Joel Salcido
• Aaron Hernandez is my brother, poem -Randall J Tyrone
• The Church of Michael Jordan, poem -Jeffrey McDaniel
• Built For It, poem -Lisa Olstein
• Federer as Irreligious Experience, essay -Porochista Khakpour
• prayer when knees give, poem -Nate Marshall
• Days of '95 II, poem -Shane Lake
• Baseball, poem -Izzy Wasserstein
• To Prevent Hypothermia, poem -Fatimah Asghar
• Give and Go, essay -Toni Jensen
• Perfect Form, poem -Kamilah Aisha Moon
• Black Boxers: A Brief History, poem -Benjamin Krusling
• The Cock Fight Place, poem -Alberto Ríos
• A Note on Process, essay -Meghan O'Rourke
• How Are You Feeling, poem -Ana Božičević
• The Wrestler, poem -Kazim Ali
• War Training: An Athletics, poem -Nomi Stone
• A Boy & His Mother Play Dead at Dawn, poem -Michael Wasson
• As If We Were Called, essay -Reginald Dwayne Betts
• Run, poem -Gary Jackson
• From Heaven, My Father Sends His Regrets, poem -Cornelius Eady
• Russian Sport, poem -Vera Pavlova, translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Valzhyna Mort
• Feel for the Water, essay -Christian Campbell
• I reckon, a latitude, poem -Asiya Wadud
• A Perfect Game, poem -Yesenia Montilla
• Dennis, poem -Kaveh Akbar
• At Eighty-Two My Father Is Learning to Walk Again, poem -Esther Lin
• Clank, novel excerpt -Tomás Q. Morin
• Liquid, poem -Aaron Smith
• Losing the 440-Yard Dash, poem -Afaa M. Weaver
• Sports Analogy, poem -David Tomas Martinez
• Why to Run Racks, essay -Lisa Fay Coutley
• El Barril, poem -James Thomas Stevens
• Who Got This Far, poem -Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela
• Project Artifacts: Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, poem -Maya Washington
• My Mother Says I'm A Warrior, essay -Claudia D. Hernandez
• Alone in the Schoolyard at Dusk, poem -Dorianne Laux
• why i can't play basketball anymore, poem -Richard Vargas
• The Condition of Being a Sports Fan, essay -Sue Hyon Bae
• Take Me Out, poem -Iliana Rocha
• Parking Lot Poem With Fernando Valenzuela, poem -Matthew Lippman
• Strike Indicator, poem -Pamela Hart
• Minor League Legend, poem -Matthew Olzmann
• Longing to the Invisible: An Ars Poetica, essay -Traci Brimhall
• High School Yoga, poem -Kat Page
• Southpaw Skin the Gloves, poem -Alicia Mountain
• Playbook, poem -Hannah Oberman-Breindel
• Games, poem -L. Lamar Wilson
• Mudita World Peace, essay -Hannah Ensor
• At the gym, moments after I failed a squat attempt that would have been easy pre-sitting-induced pinched nerve, poem -Candace Williams
• Inside the City Williams, poem -Norman Dubie
• Diana Nyad as J.M.W Turner, poem -BK Fischer
• game recognizes game, poem -t'ai freedom ford
• Off Sides, essay -Susan Briante
• The Chain, poem -Elyse Fenton
• Young Woman Wrestler, poem -Tria Blu Wakpa
• Self-portrait in Sleep, poem -Dean Rader
• Infield Contrapuntal, poem -Meg Day
• Shots Missed, poem -Celeste Adame
• Sports History, poem -Brett Fletcher Lauer
• The Yo-Yo Heir's Lament, poem -Eugene Gloria
• Stadium Mocs, poem -Chip Livingston
• Bad Love Affair, poem -Joseph Millar
• Ode To The Dream Shake, poem -Ben Purkert
• Catch, poem -Trevino Brings Plenty
• The Sum of Our Doing, essay -Holly M. Wendt
• Who Holds The Stag's Head Gets to Speak, poem -Gabrielle Calvacoressi
• Polaroid: Links, poem -Stacey Lynn Brown
• Of Competition or ""And the sheeted dead squeak and gibber in the Roman streets"", poem -Brendan Constantine
• Darkening the Belt, poem -Anders Carlson-Wee from the first half of FAREWELL TO SOCCER Ninety Minute-Long Stories, fiction -Valerio Magrelli translated from the Italian by Will Schutt
• ¡Sangre! ¡Sangre! ¡Sangre!, poem -Nandi Comer
• This is Not an Essay about Wresting, or If David Markson Loved the WWF Like I Did When I Was 12, essay -John Findura
• The Curtain, poem -Ryan Black
• Ladies' Arm Wrestling Match at the Blue Moon Diner, poem -Jenny Johnson
• Scorekeep, fiction -Tommy Orange
• Ghazal at the End of Hogpen Road, poem -J. Scott Brownlee
• Can We Have Our Ball Back?, poem -Matthew Dickman
• untitled, poem -Kevin Goodan
• ""Productive Antagonisms: An Interview with boxer and poet Christina Olivares"", interview -Saretta Morgan interviewing Christina Olivares
• The Rookie, poem -January Gill O'Neil
• Cross Country, poem -Roger Reeves
• Another Kind of Faith, essay -Joaquín Zihuatanejo
• Why Pam Hates Sprite and Sunflower Seeds, poem -Alison Rollins
• The Tribes, poem -Chee Brossy
• All the Flesh, Singing, poem -Shivanee Ramlochen
• Between Practice, essay -Terrance Hayes
• List of Contributors

Promotional Information

• This book troubles traditional perceptions of athletics and the bodies who both compete and cheer, and the societies and arenas where they do that work. Sport is as powerful in its victories as it is in its defeats. This is simultaneously about the joy of victory and the impossibilities of winning in American athletics.

About the Author

Natalie Diaz is an associate professor of English and the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec and of the forthcoming book Post Colonial Love Poem. In 2018 she received a MacArthur Fellowship. Hannah Ensor is the assistant director of the Hopwood Awards Program at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Love Dream with Television.

Reviews

"Natalie Diaz, along with associate editor Hannah Ensor, has provided another valuable collection of critical commentary on salient issues pertaining to identity and power structures in Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing. As a celebrated poet and essayist as well as former professional female athlete in the American sports industry, Diaz (Mojave), is an excellent authority on these themes."--Tara Keegan, American Indian Quarterly