Be Holding

Julius Erving, the Philadelphia 76ers forward who went by Dr. J, is the subject that anchors this long poem by Ross Gay. Erving was a dominant presence on the court through the 1970s and 1980s, and Gay's tribute to him is not simply a celebration of one athlete's gifts. The poem moves through a form of lyric inquiry and meditation, linking a celebrated play Erving made in the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers to street basketball, the flight of the Igbo people, and the horrors of the Middle Passage. From there it turns to photography, surveillance, and state violence, then to music and to personal stories of movement and family devotion.

At its center is a question about how imagination and the act of looking might draw people nearer to one another. The poem asks whether seeing someone closely can lead us to reach toward them, and whether that reaching can itself become a kind of joy.