ENG 102-1105
Prof M Judd
University of Nevada, Reno
Spring 2018
James Langelle
"Requiem for a Champ", June Jordan--Reverse Outline & Reflection
Reverse Outline:
- Description of the boxer’s neighborhood in Brooklyn
- The neighborhood appearance only slightly changed with the weather conditions.
- Jordan visualizes what the boxer might have seen as he was growing up in the neighborhood.
- A brief paragraph on the odds of success.
- It was the boxer’s background and upbringing that made him what he is.
- The writer showing empathy for the subject, painfully.
Reflection:
There is no doubt that the professional heavyweight boxer and one-time champion suffered from an inferiority complex, not with his physical ability, but with the opposite sex. His career, the personal one, is marred with a string of sexual abuse and assault cases, including the one that sent him to prison for rape in 1992. Whether this was the result of his childhood in the neighborhood alluded to in “Requiem” or a victim of his phenomenal success and the wealth that it brought, will probably have to be assessed at a later time.
In recent years, the champ has followed the path so many star athletes have, that of success beyond their dreams; only to find themselves bankrupt in old age, doing cheesy commercials in faraway places like Australia, as in Tyson’s case.
June Jordan’s brief article serves not just as a freestyle poetic reminder of where success often leads, but a warning to take advice from what a friend of mine once told me,
“Be nice to people on the way up, you may run into them on the way back down.”
References:
“Chronology of Mike Tyson”, Las Vegas Sun, Sept. 18, 1998
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Tyson
(The advice came from Don Gomez, Journalist, Author)