Carson Cistulli
Encyclopedia
Carson Cistulli is an American poet, essayist and English professor. His works of poetry include Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated, Assorted Fictions, and A Century of Enthusiasm.
Carson Cistulli was born December 23, 1979 in Concord, New Hampshire to Philip Cistulli Jr. and Holly Young. Carson and his younger sister, Samantha, passed their early childhood in a middle class Italian-American home until their parents' divorce in 1994. Rather than choosing to live with one or the other of his parents Cistulli left for boarding school at Milton Academy
in Massachusetts.
where he studied under poet Kenneth Koch
, of the New York School
of poetry. After his studies under Koch, he moved to Seattle to write. He would later receive a bachelors degree in Classical Civilizations from the University of Montana in Missoula and a master's degree in Creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst
.
A biographical reading of his poetry highlights echos of these experiences, death, disease -- "At some point you'll die of a) cancer b) heart disease[...]" -- the apparently offhand remark of breathlessness in Chapter 84 of A Century of Enthusiasm, Part III. After a lengthy meditation on enthusiasm
(and a call towards listening, invocations of both the ontological argument and the ten commandments) Cistulli writes:
) and intertextuality
with scholastic figures as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson
, Sean Casey or Emily Dickinson
occur frequently in his work. Cistulli also plays with the notions of authorship, poetic inspiration
, and recontextualization.
Lisa Baker writes that "In a day and age when we are quick to consume the rigid definitions of relationships fed to us by those who wield power, Cistulli tutors us in language’s malleability; a new comparison, an unexpected verb in a familiar phrase can force an entirely new perspective—and perhaps one more
curious and more generous
."
's famous "I am large—I contain multitudes" as "it is large and contains multitudes." The effects of the re-interpretation of the author as multiple, fragmentary and opaque can be seen in James B. Jones review of Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Jones writes that reading Cistulli is “as though Rimbaud, the Boston Sports Guy, a drunken Slovene, and the director of advertising for a struggling talk-radio station all sat down for a game of exquisite corpse
”.
While this review was written in 2007, it could easily have been written about Cistulli's 2010 piece A Poem with Dick Allen’s Name in It:
In this excerpt the I -- Cistulli who will elsewhere introduce himself as "Carson Cistulli. You may know from me such films as 'How Stella Got Her Groove Taken Away in the First Place' and 'Haters Gonna Hate: The Life and Times of Jimmy Stewart'." -- is lost and in its place, insofar as Cistulli will write of an author, authorship, as taking place, is the "unassailable" it writing between and beyond a stable "I" who can say 'I wrote this' (for as Cistulli writes, citing Borges, "I do not know which of us is writing this page.")
, SBNation, FanGraphs
, ESPN
, The Hardball Times
, The New Enthusiast
, RotoWire
, The Huffington Post
, and The Portland Sportsman.
is to explore "that place where quantitative analysis and aesthetics meet" in practicing what he calls the art of sabermetrical research. Within sabermetrics he is the creator of NERD
, SCOUT and historical GBz%. Cistulli has influenced many contemporary sports thinkers including Rob Neyer
who, asked about the value of Cistulli's work within the sabermetric community, responded "there's value in just about everything that Cistulli does. He's got an original mind and we'll ignore him at our peril."
practice of feast days and saintly hymns Cistulli began writing verses for past and present baseball players in February 2011 with a hymn to Bug Holliday
. He has since written hymns to Dazzy Vance
, Honus Wagner
, Sparky Anderson
and Vladimir Guerrero
among others. These celebrations include a traditional biography, a lyrical “prayer,” and, beginning with the feast of Liván Hernández
, propose a spiritual “ritual” or “exercise” related to the player’s life.
In January 2009 Cistulli decided to add "Moral Edification" to his writing at the The New Enthusiast
: "in the tradition of Heraclitus, La Rochefoucauld, and Morgan Freeman in most of his later films, we have decided to experiment with that most honored form, the aphorism". In addition to these daily aphorisms he started writing aphorisms for SB Nation
in March 2011.
, Rob Nelson (inventor of Big League Chew
), Dayn Perry
, Jesse Thorn
, and Rob Neyer
.
• Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books (2004)
• Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated (2006)
• Assorted Fictions (2006)
• Origin, sixth series, Spring (2006)
• A Century of Enthusiasm (2007)
• The Prostituesdays Anthology (editor, 2008)
Early Years
Milton Academy
Milton Academy is a coeducational, independent preparatory, boarding and day school in Milton, Massachusetts consisting of a grade 9–12 Upper School and a grade K–8 Lower School. Boarding is offered starting in 9th grade...
in Massachusetts.
Education
After graduating from Milton in 1998 he attended Columbia UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
where he studied under poet Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77...
, of the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...
of poetry. After his studies under Koch, he moved to Seattle to write. He would later receive a bachelors degree in Classical Civilizations from the University of Montana in Missoula and a master's degree in Creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
.
Panic Attacks
In an essay about sports and aesthetics, "A Lengthy Meditation on Baseball and the Science of Happiness," Cistulli explained that part of his turn towards writing was a therapeutic response to anxiety attacks. Cistulli wrote that these attacks became so intense that he at times struggled to breathe: "During the fall of 2001, while living in Missoula, MT, I began experiencing some symptoms of generalized anxiety: occasional tightness or pain in the chest and limbs, invasive thoughts about death and illness [...] those symptoms persisted off and on into the next spring, at which time I developed a considerably less pleasant one (i.e. symptom): for long periods of time, and with no warning, I was unable to breathe involuntarily".A biographical reading of his poetry highlights echos of these experiences, death, disease -- "At some point you'll die of a) cancer b) heart disease[...]" -- the apparently offhand remark of breathlessness in Chapter 84 of A Century of Enthusiasm, Part III. After a lengthy meditation on enthusiasm
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm originally meant inspiration or possession by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god. Johnson's Dictionary, the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, defines enthusiasm as "a vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour or...
(and a call towards listening, invocations of both the ontological argument and the ten commandments) Cistulli writes:
Poetry
Cistulli’s work A Century of Enthusiasm begins “People of the world, allow me to introduce myself: my name is Carson Harrington Cistulli, ambassador to crunk in the Western Hemisphere”. Carson plays with context and language often mixing the vernacular with the scholastic. References to pop-culture (like the above mention of crunkCrunk
Crunk is a music style that originated in Memphis, Tennessee in the mid-to-late 1990s and gained mainstream success around 2003–2004. Performers of crunk music are sometimes referred to as crunksters. An archetypal crunk track most frequently uses a drum machine rhythm, heavy bassline, and...
) and intertextuality
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
with scholastic figures as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, Sean Casey or Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
occur frequently in his work. Cistulli also plays with the notions of authorship, poetic inspiration
Artistic inspiration
Inspiration refers to an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavour. Literally, the word means "breathed upon," and it has its origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greeks believed that inspiration came from the muses, as well as the gods Apollo and...
, and recontextualization.
Lisa Baker writes that "In a day and age when we are quick to consume the rigid definitions of relationships fed to us by those who wield power, Cistulli tutors us in language’s malleability; a new comparison, an unexpected verb in a familiar phrase can force an entirely new perspective—and perhaps one more
curious and more generous
Generosity
Generosity is the habit of giving freely without expecting anything in return. It can involve offering time, assets or talents to aid someone in need...
."
Authorship
In his essay Let us Proclaim the Mystery of Faith Cistulli references the "ineffab[ility]" of authorship. To the question who is the author Cistulli writes that "there is no answer. Or, rather, there is no one answer". Following Borges' "whatsoever is good does not belong to anyone, not even to the other, but to language and tradition" Cistulli re-writes Walt WhitmanWalt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
's famous "I am large—I contain multitudes" as "it is large and contains multitudes." The effects of the re-interpretation of the author as multiple, fragmentary and opaque can be seen in James B. Jones review of Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated. Jones writes that reading Cistulli is “as though Rimbaud, the Boston Sports Guy, a drunken Slovene, and the director of advertising for a struggling talk-radio station all sat down for a game of exquisite corpse
Exquisite corpse
Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original...
”.
While this review was written in 2007, it could easily have been written about Cistulli's 2010 piece A Poem with Dick Allen’s Name in It:
In this excerpt the I -- Cistulli who will elsewhere introduce himself as "Carson Cistulli. You may know from me such films as 'How Stella Got Her Groove Taken Away in the First Place' and 'Haters Gonna Hate: The Life and Times of Jimmy Stewart'." -- is lost and in its place, insofar as Cistulli will write of an author, authorship, as taking place, is the "unassailable" it writing between and beyond a stable "I" who can say 'I wrote this' (for as Cistulli writes, citing Borges, "I do not know which of us is writing this page.")
Essays and Journalism
Cistulli's essays and journalism have appeared in The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, SBNation, FanGraphs
Fangraphs
FanGraphs.com is a website run by Fangraphs Inc., located in Arlington, Virginia, and created and owned by David Appelman that provides statistics for every player in Major League Baseball history....
, ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
, The Hardball Times
The Hardball Times
is a website which publishes news, original comments and statistical analysis of baseball each week Monday through Friday, in addition to the Hardball Times Annual book which features essays by leading sabermetric personalities. The website features the slogan "Baseball. Insight...
, The New Enthusiast
The New Enthusiast
The New Enthusiast is a print and online magazine published by The Shuttlecoque Sporting Club. It was one of the first venues through which poet Carson Cistulli published his writings from November 2007 to March 2008.-History:...
, RotoWire
RotoWire
RotoWire.com is a company based in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. that specializes in fantasy sports news and fantasy-style games.RotoWire provides fantasy news and information to ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, FoxSports.com, NASCAR.com, NFL.com, NBA.com, and Baseball Prospectus.RotoWire is the successor to...
, The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
, and The Portland Sportsman.
Sabermetrics
Cistulli has written that his interest in sabermetricsSabermetrics
Sabermetrics is the specialized analysis of baseball through objective, empirical evidence, specifically baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research...
is to explore "that place where quantitative analysis and aesthetics meet" in practicing what he calls the art of sabermetrical research. Within sabermetrics he is the creator of NERD
NERD (sabermetrics)
In baseball statistics, NERD is a quantitative measure of expected aesthetical value. NERD was originally created by Carson Cistulli and is part of his project of exploring the "art" of sabermetric research...
, SCOUT and historical GBz%. Cistulli has influenced many contemporary sports thinkers including Rob Neyer
Rob Neyer
Rob Neyer is a baseball author and writer for SB Nation. He started his career working for Bill James and STATS, and then joined ESPN.com as a columnist from 1996 to January 2011 before becoming SB Nation's National Baseball Editor...
who, asked about the value of Cistulli's work within the sabermetric community, responded "there's value in just about everything that Cistulli does. He's got an original mind and we'll ignore him at our peril."
Feast Days
In “admir[ation]” of the Eastern Orthodox ChurchEastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
practice of feast days and saintly hymns Cistulli began writing verses for past and present baseball players in February 2011 with a hymn to Bug Holliday
Bug Holliday
James Wear "Bug" Holliday was an American center fielder in Major League Baseball for ten seasons, from through , plus the 1885 World Series. He holds the distinction of being the first player to make his major league debut in post-season play, with the Chicago White Stockings in 1885...
. He has since written hymns to Dazzy Vance
Dazzy Vance
Charles Arthur "Dazzy" Vance was a star Major League Baseball starting pitcher during the 1920s.-Biography:...
, Honus Wagner
Honus Wagner
-Louisville Colonels:Recognizing his talent, Barrow recommended Wagner to the Louisville Colonels. After some hesitation about his awkward figure, Wagner was signed by the Colonels, where he hit .338 in 61 games....
, Sparky Anderson
Sparky Anderson
George Lee "Sparky" Anderson was an American Major League Baseball manager. He managed the National League's Cincinnati Reds to the 1975 and 1976 championships, then added a third title in 1984 with the Detroit Tigers of the American League. He was the first manager to win the World Series in both...
and Vladimir Guerrero
Vladimir Guerrero
Vladimir Alvino Guerrero is a free agent Major League Baseball right fielder and designated hitter.In , he was voted the American League MVP...
among others. These celebrations include a traditional biography, a lyrical “prayer,” and, beginning with the feast of Liván Hernández
Liván Hernández
Eisler Liván Hernández Carrera is a Cuban professional baseball pitcher. He is the half-brother of pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernández.-Playing career:...
, propose a spiritual “ritual” or “exercise” related to the player’s life.
Electronic Aphorisms
“Take a daguerreotype Daguerreotype The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate.... , it’ll last longer”: this was never a popular expression. |
| Carson Cistulli, "Introductory Aphorism" |
In January 2009 Cistulli decided to add "Moral Edification" to his writing at the The New Enthusiast
The New Enthusiast
The New Enthusiast is a print and online magazine published by The Shuttlecoque Sporting Club. It was one of the first venues through which poet Carson Cistulli published his writings from November 2007 to March 2008.-History:...
: "in the tradition of Heraclitus, La Rochefoucauld, and Morgan Freeman in most of his later films, we have decided to experiment with that most honored form, the aphorism". In addition to these daily aphorisms he started writing aphorisms for SB Nation
SB Nation
SB Nation is a sports network owned and operated by Vox Media with more than 300 separate web sites maintained primarily by part-time contract writers. They put together posts, facilitate dialogue and interact with commenters. At a kickoff event in February 2009, there were about 185 blogs...
in March 2011.
Radio Hosting
Cistulli was previously the host of "Goal: The Soccer Show" (103.3 FM Northampton, MA) and "The Shuttlecoque Sporting Hour" (1450 AM Portland, OR.) He is currently the host of FanGraphs Audio. With FanGraphs Audio he has interviewed, among others, Matt AntonelliMatt Antonelli
Matthew Antonio Antonelli is an American professional baseball second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball. He bats and throws right-handed. He was called up from the Triple-A Portland Beavers on September 1, during MLB September call-ups...
, Rob Nelson (inventor of Big League Chew
Big League Chew
Big League Chew is a brand of bubble gum that is shredded and packaged in an aluminum foil pouch. It was created by Portland Mavericks left-handed pitcher Rob Nelson, and pitched to the Wrigley Company by former New York Yankee All-Star Jim Bouton, a Maverick teammate of Nelson's, as a fun...
), Dayn Perry
Dayn Perry
-Journalism:His journalism can be found on FanGraphs online journal NotGraphs. He formerly published with BaseballProspectus.com and at Foxsports.com...
, Jesse Thorn
Jesse Thorn
Jesse Thorn is an American public radio show host/creator. He is the host and producer of the radio show and podcast The Sound of Young America, which is distributed by Public Radio International to 25 public terrestrial radio stations in 13 states and is also broadcast weekly on XM Radio's "XM...
, and Rob Neyer
Rob Neyer
Rob Neyer is a baseball author and writer for SB Nation. He started his career working for Bill James and STATS, and then joined ESPN.com as a columnist from 1996 to January 2011 before becoming SB Nation's National Baseball Editor...
.
Works
• Englished by Diverse Hands (2003)• Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books (2004)
• Some Common Weaknesses Illustrated (2006)
• Assorted Fictions (2006)
• Origin, sixth series, Spring (2006)
• A Century of Enthusiasm (2007)
• The Prostituesdays Anthology (editor, 2008)
Radio
- NPR/WFCR Interview - Tina Antolini interviews Carson Cistulli
- Fangraphs Audio - Host
- Goal: The Soccer Show - Host