Read the excerpt from “how i learned english.”
ron o’neill, jim, dennis, were talking it up
in the field, a blue sky above them
tipped with cirrus.
and there i was,
just off the plane and plopped in the middle
of williamsport, pa. and a neighborhood game,
unnatural and without any moves,
my notions of baseball and america
growing fuzzier each time i whiffed.
the first-person point of view in this excerpt readers understand
how awkward the speaker feels playing baseball.
how much all the boys enjoy playing baseball.
how the speaker feels about the other boys.
how the other boys feel about the speaker.