Edward Hirsch’s “Fast Break” modernizes the elegy while retaining some of the traditional features of the style. Many elegies spend a portion of the poem focused on death itself: thoughts on immortality or the transitory nature of life serve to console the poetic speaker and the reader by lamenting loss while recognizing the natural cycle. “Fast Break” mentions death only in the epigraph of the poem and only by implication. The poem’s action depicts a successful, aggressive basketball transition—the move from defense to offense—executing a precise metaphor along with a piece of bittersweet wordplay. The player does everything right in the poem, but he falls nonetheless. Hirsch’s memorial captures the acute shock of unexpected death; the speaker can only witness and report the player’s fall—he cannot providing any reason or explanation.

“Fast Break” begins in limbo, on a threshold. The basketball lingers “helplessly” on the rim, its fate left to outside cause and effect (Line 2). The speaker describes the player—the “starting center” (Line 3)—as if he is rescuing a child from danger, “gathering” the ball “like a cherished possession” (Lines 5-6).