Edward Hirsch's Poem Fast Break

327 Words2 Pages
In the poem Fast Break by Edward Hirsch, he writes of an exciting basketball game. He has a way to make basketball sound fun and interesting to someone who doesn’t typically enjoy the sport. Hirsch creates imagery by using vivid language and similes. Hirsch paints the perfect picture of an action-packed basketball game with his vivid words. He avoids simple words and choses words like “gangly” to describe the tall, thin player in line three. He is very descriptive in the action of the game, for example, he says “The guard lunges out and commits.” (ll 23-24) He describes how the power-forward “explodes past them in a fury” to show how fast he swept by the other players. (ll 25-26) Hirsch’s choice of words is what makes the poems message