Slam, Dunk, & Hook

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1991

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Physical Grace

“Slam, Dunk, & Hook” celebrates sporting prowess with an attention to detail found in few other poems. But beyond the specific terminology of the basketball court, the wider theme is a celebration of the human body’s capacity for grace that could extend to other sports and physical pursuits, including combat. This theme can be traced back to the classical writers of Ancient Greece and Rome, who mythologized the physical exploits of heroes like Hercules and Achilles in poetry. In more recent times, prose writers and film directors have frequently celebrated charismatic sports stars like Mohammed Ali and Kobe Bryant; thus, for a poet like Komunyakaa to focus on sport is an important statement. By writing about basketball he suggests that the beauty to be found in the performance of a perfectly executed slam dunk or fast break is worthy of comparison with great music or art. This is a democratic gesture, since basketball and other sports are part of the fabric of life for millions of people, including many with little material wealth or access to education.

At the same time, Komunyakaa is clear about the limits of what sporting or physical prowess can achieve. The players use sport as a means of forgetting or escaping the painful limitations of their actual lives. However, built into the physicality of existence is the inevitability of failure, injury, decline, or worse—even at the hands of the police or “Trouble” (Line 29) that threatens to haunt the players. Faced with the tragic conditions of life and wider society, sport and physical grace can offer only a temporary escape, but nevertheless, a glorious one.

Fragility/Vulnerability

With the horrors of the Vietnam War as a formative experience, Komunyakaa developed the theme of human fragility throughout his work. In one of his most famous poems, “Facing It,” this theme directs the whole poem about a veteran at the Vietnam memorial contemplating the loss of life, limb, and loved ones. The body in “Facing It” is presented as fragile and broken, with even the living survivor feeling as if he is fading into the stone of the memorial. “Slam, Dunk, & Hook,” by contrast, is about teenagers playing sport, with the threat of the real, terrifying violence that might break them hovering just under the surface. None of the players are injured, but the potential for damage is hinted at in much of the poem’s word choice and imagery. “Fast breaks” (Lines 1 and 34) is a perfect example of this: a devastating attacking move which also carries within it the potential double meaning of sudden, serious injury in conjunction with this specific movement in a basketball game. Similarly, “On swivels of bone & faith” (Line 37) suggests inbuilt vulnerability, since a swivel is a movement and inherently unstable. This mirrors Komunyakaa’s vision of life itself as precarious, never fixed and always vulnerable to tragedy with little warning. It is a vision where a group of boys playing sport in a backyard can evoke lines such as “Exploded / the skullcap of hope” (Line 14-15), hinting at the terrible violence of the Vietnam War to come. Yet at the same, this precariousness is what gives life its beauty and elevates the players to a genuinely heroic status in the poem’s final lines.

Race

Komunyakaa has written much more explicitly about the Black experience in other poems. Lines in the poem “Blues Chant Hoodoo Revival” center on his understanding of Black history as a continual battle to maintain grace and dignity through music and physical grace in the face of oppression: “Our story is / a rifle butt / across our heads/ … where they kick down doors / & we swan-dive from / the brooklyn bridge” (Lines 80-87). In “Slam, Dunk, & Hook,” the ideal of physical grace as escape is certainly there in the players’ mythologizing of their own court skills, but the “we” of the poem seems to be the speaker and his boyhood friends rather than the collective Black identity. Rather than being explicitly stated, the racial aspect of the boys’ vulnerability hovers just beneath the surface, coming closest to emerging fully in the image of “Trouble / slapping a blackjack / Against an open palm” (Lines 29-31). The suggestion is that these boys may not yet have encountered the violent consequences of racism to come. This lack of awareness itself could be part of the danger, as Komunyakaa suggests in an interview where he considers a quotation from James Baldwin: “If a black boy, by the time he’s 14 years old, doesn’t know the score there’s no way he can survive.” (Baldwin, James cited in Conley, Susan. “Yusef Komunyakaa: A Profile.” Ploughshares, 1997). In this context, the ending of the poem, “we knew we were / Beautiful & dangerous” (Lines 39-40), represents a triumph, since the speaker finally arrives at an awareness of their identity with all its complications.