Poker and Poetry

I often play poker on Friday nights at Crazy Al's. It's about a twenty-five minute drive, down Highway 92, in Douglasville. Tonite I drove there, hoping for my usual kicks shuffling cards and winning chips. On the way, I thought about poker, as I usually do - how I haven't played much recently, the beats and good hands, and about poker generally. I didn't get to play last week because I went to a couple football games that weekend, but I did play the Friday before, where I finished fourth and second in the two tournaments that nite. I was looking forward to playing again.

For some reason, Crazy Al's was closed. No poker. Disappointment. When I got home, I was still thinking about poker, as I got a bottled water and put on The Sound of Music. What's interesting about all this poker pensiveness is that poker is more than just something I love to do. Every since I came back from Canada two summers ago, which is when I think I really began playing poker, the game has been a constant: of escapism, of remedy, of catharsis. Whether it be my struggles with A, or my frustration during internship last spring, or the problems with teaching, poker has always been there to help me get away, have fun, without worrying about anything else going on in life. All that matters is whether that guy's bet means he's bluffing or whether my raise will get him to muck his cards.

I began thinking too about Tony Hoagland, probably a favorite poet of mine. This poker stuff reminds me of a marvelous poem of his called "Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet."** Basically, I think the poem is about when things are bad or your lost. Or as he says,

Imagine a century like a room so large,
a corridor so long
you could travel for a lifetime

and never find the door,
until you had forgotten
that such a things as doors exist.

When you can't find a way out, or you don't know there is a way out, and you're stuck in a big mess, Hoagland tells us that rather than losing sight and remaining static, it's better to at least have something: some force, some passion, some guide, no matter what it is:

Better to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.

Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high...

What a relief it would be
to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!

Sometimes it seems enjoying poker as I do is too much of a good thing. There are more important things, I think to myself. Maybe it's even maniacal, obsessive, or downright misguided. Perhaps. But I guess, like it or not, poker has been my Captain Ahab. And at least I have something, and it's nice to have that in your life.

**http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/hoagland.html