Slam, Dunk, & Hook

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1991

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Basket

The basket, 10 feet high and only attainable through a team move, accurate shot, or the athletic contortion of a slam dunk, symbolizes the idea of an irresistible dream—but one that is hard to attain and comes with the risk of failure. Komunyakaa dramatizes these two possible outcomes, with the first shot going in and the second bouncing off the rim. The net is the focus of the successful shot, with erotic undercurrents in the alliterative description “a hot / swish of strings like silk” (Lines 4-5). The delicacy of the sound, and of the strings comprising the net, also evokes the effortlessness of a great musician playing an instrument. By contrast, the failed shot or frenzied play later in the poem activates the hard rim of the basket and the backboard behind it, creating the tension-filled images of the vibrating rim and the splintered backboard. These parts of the basket symbolize the tension or damage in the boys’ bodies as they seek a release from their problems by endlessly playing the game.

The Labyrinth

The original labyrinth was a maze of passages built by King Minos of Crete to contain the shameful half-man-half-bull Minotaur to whom his wife had given birth after the sea-God Poseidon made her fall in love with a bull. Into this horrifying place, young Athenian men and women were sent each year as a sacrifice, until in one of the most famous stories of Greek mythology, the hero Theseus unwound a ball of thread to find his way before slaying the Minotaur. Having referenced Mercury in the opening line, Komunyakaa clearly intends the mythological echoes to resonate, but rather than representing the players as the heroes, he objectifies the whole group of them as the labyrinth itself: “In the roundhouse / Labyrinth our bodies created” (Lines 7-8). The effect of this is to suggest that the game somehow subsumes the players’ individual personalities into a confusion of bodies. A roundhouse is a type of jail or a cabin in an old sailing ship, and the phrase “roundhouse labyrinth” may evoke memories of the terrible crush of bodies in the ships that carried Africans to America to be sold as slaves. This mirrors the horror of the ships thats brought the Minotaur’s annual diet of victims from Athens to Crete, and hint that though slavery is long in the past, these boys might be unable to escape the trap of their racial identity.

The Slipknot

A slipknot is referenced in the poem’s third last line, as the speaker rediscovers the celebratory joy in the memory of playing basketball: “Our bodies spun…Through a lyric slipknot” (Line 38). A slipknot is a type of knot which can be tight and hold firm, but at the same time allows the possibility for easy release by pulling one end. It simultaneously symbolizes the two opposing ideas of entrapment and escape. This opposition is at the heart of Komunyakaa’s view of sport offering both possibilities of victory and failure, balanced on a knife edge. By referring to a “lyric slipknot,” he suggests that music and poetry occupy the same terrain, and that danger may be necessary for beauty to exist. Though the speaker here is a basketball player, it represents Komunyakaa’s idea that great music and poetry often comes from witnessing injustice, violence, and pain. Slip Knot was also the title of the 2006 operatic work he wrote in collaboration with composer T.S. Anderson, demonstrating the importance of this motif in his work.