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THE WRONG SEASON by Joel Oppenheimer

THE WRONG SEASON

By

Pub Date: June 29th, 1973
Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill

you gotta read the village voice or drink at the lion's head or be a met's fan or at least live in the apple (""cavett announced the other night that the squares call it the big apple and the insiders just say the apple and how in hell would he know?"") -- well, that's about 10 million people give or take a few muggers and the bronx -- to dig oppenheimer's reprise of the '72 season, the wrong season, nothing like the impossible dream of '69 you goddamn betcha, so if you're in the know you'll know that oppenheimer is the voice's no-cap poet laureate but maybe you didn't know that he's one helluva baseball fan -- an old dodger enthusiast and a born yankee hater who adopted the mets as surrogate bums who's also into baseball cards (though he resents the modern-day ""tom scarer as boy"" variety ""because baseball cards are supposed to be baseball cards, not family albums"") and, like marianne moore, writes poems about his heroes (""for real the rain came/ sunday night. we were/ one and one by then,/ cleon three for seven,/ i paced the kitchen/ caged, an animal, the/ rain kept coming down""), nothing to write home about (besides the bronx is yankee territory) but after phil roth's great american novel we deserve this, for as joe flaherty (a voice buddy, lots of them appear here) says in his introduction, ""the Lord never equipped poets with a high hard one -- the screw ball is their metier."" should sell 10 million copies.