BASKETBALL: A Structural Study of Literary Devices in Twelve Poems explores the relationship between literary structure and the physical action of basketball.Each of the twelve poems begins with a literary device and a basketball phenomenon that share an underlying pattern of behavior. Syllogism emerges through obstruction, separation, and opening. Chiasmus moves through control, release, and return. Paradox takes shape through retreat, elevation, and attack. Alliteration develops through recurring sound and movement, while caesura appears through the interruption of momentum.Rather than treating basketball as a metaphor for literature, BASKETBALL examines structural correspondence: the possibility that different systems can remain independently recognizable while exhibiting comparable patterns of organization. Movement, pressure, repetition, reversal, interruption, sound, threshold, and transformation provide the points of contact between action on the court and structure in language.The collection also introduces the principles of Absolute Composition, a method of composition that begins with observable structure rather than predetermined theme, symbolism, or interpretation. Readers are encouraged to begin with what can be observed: what moves, repeats, reverses, collides, stops, separates, or returns. Interpretation can then develop from those observations.With twelve compressed poems, an introduction to structural reading, an appendix on the principles of Absolute Composition, and a glossary of literary and structural terms, BASKETBALL offers a distinctive approach to studying literary devices through the recognizable physical structures of the game.Intended for classroom use in secondary education, the book can be read as a poetry collection, a study of literary devices, and an introduction to structural observation through Absolute Composition.
