Reviewed on 3/14/2025
★★★★★
Yesenia Montilla’s “Knicks Game” reflects on how we should make sense of human suffering in New York’s urban setting. The poem opens with a dedication to Cheryl Boyce Taylor and the history of Africans. Montilla continues to describe the basketball team: “their lean torsos tattered & tapered in Coogi sweaters.” The players’ resilience transforms into a ritual tribute to the dead. The next stanzas turn to the city’s prosperity: “Bodega filled with the aroma of a good chopped cheese.” She highlights the significance of the urban setting in infusing the sport with exploitation and consumption.
Montilla then travels to memories beyond the Stadium, with “Rome …/ toward the end.” The poem highlights the grand and tragic demise of capitalism, a revolutionary undercurrent gaining energy. “The city survives on air.” In this game of survival, we can see a montage of sweat and heartbreak electrified by traumas in “Palestine, Congo…” Yet we strive on in the final hopeful image. Montilla imagines “we win everything we thought we never could.” Through the act of watching and remembering, we get to transcend our lived “losses.” This sense of honor and grit points the direction for our future endeavors and the destined victory.
Reviewed on 3/14/2025
★★★★★
Yesenia Montilla’s “Knicks Game” is an elegy, a cultural reflection, and an urban hymn. The poem opens with a dedication to Cheryl Boyce Taylor, grounding its narrative in Black history. Montilla continues with a description of the basketball team: “their lean torsos tattered & tapered in Coogi sweaters.” The players’ resilience transforms into a ritual, a solemn tribute to the dead. The next stanzas turn to New York’s prosperity: “Bodega filled with the aroma of a good chopped cheese.” She highlights the significance of the urban setting in infusing the sport with exploitation and consumption.
Montilla then travels to memories beyond the Stadium, with “Rome …/ toward the end.” The poem highlights the grand and tragic demise of capitalism, a revolutionary undercurrent gaining energy. “The city survives on air.” In this game of survival, we can see a montage of sweat and heartbreak electrified by traumas in “Palestine, Congo…” Yet we strive on in the final hopeful image. Montilla imagines “we win everything we thought we never could.” Through the act of watching and remembering, we get to transcend our lived “losses.” This sense of honor and grit points the direction for our future endeavors and the destined victory.
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