Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Frederick Nims' "Pigskin Abbey" is an incisive critique of the American obsession with football, aligning its spectacle with grand historical and mythological traditions while exposing its hollow, ritualistic nature. The poem moves seamlessly between the feverish intensity of the game and a broader meditation on cultural values, drawing connections between athletic contests, war, commerce, and morality. Through rich imagery and sharp irony, Nims transforms the football stadium into a modern Canterbury, where the faithful gather in a liturgical display of competition, exultation, and, ultimately, emptiness.

The opening lines situate the reader in the immediate aftermath of a football game, where the twilight gun signals a victory that is both temporary and eternal, enshrined in headlines and forever. The language evokes both the celebratory explosion of battle—rows explode / With copper gush of band, sudden confetti—and the more subdued unraveling of the moment, as the mighty cone of crowd begins to swirl before draining into funnel exits. The players, having shed their helmets, become boys again, momentarily stripped of their battlefield personas. Yet, despite their return to normalcy, the weight of their harness lingers, marking them as warriors within the spectacle of the sport.

Nims' stadium is a microcosm of American life, an Our Canterbury where various figures congregate in a shared pilgrimage. Priests with good cigars and drunk women clutch and totter alongside brokers and tan captains whose toys of valor shine. The stadium houses an immense communion, where victory and defeat are equally numbing, transforming even the stupid into participants in the grand ritual. The all-encompassing reach of the game extends beyond the stadium, as its ineffable event is broadcast into hospitals, jails, and even iron catacombs of bomber cockpits, linking the sport’s theatrics to the machinery of war.

The autumn rites of football are likened to the mythic and literary past, as Nims conjures images of Arthurian legend (the jewel-incrusted sword springing like a trout from the lake) and Greek tragedy (Oedipus and his golgothas of eye). The players enact a modern version of these ancient narratives, with heroic limbs that romp the zones of nothing and muscle flexing for itself alone. The poem’s tone turns increasingly scathing as it exposes the absurdity of celebrating athletic prowess devoid of purpose, as Ferguson fades, a Merlin shoulder priming in a game whose parabolas of doom are bright but ultimately meaningless.

At its core, "Pigskin Abbey" is an indictment of a culture that glorifies physicality while neglecting intellectual and moral development. The reference to Troy reinforces this theme, suggesting that football—like the Trojan War—is a spectacle fueled by passion, violence, and the illusion of honor. The comparison to Helen, hell-on-homes and hell-on-heroes, underscores the idea that these contests are driven by forces as fickle and destructive as lust. Nims’ lament for a society that worships gut over radiant brain echoes throughout the poem, questioning when a thought will ring keen as blue toledo—when intelligence, justice, and truth will be as valued as brute strength.

The poem crescendos into a fierce critique of capitalism and corruption, as our fat and mooncalf nation prioritizes spectacle over substance, reducing soul to an afterthought. Nims invokes Christ, calling for a second cleansing of the temple, where priests of commerce—personified as Morton or McOily—profit from deception. The big committees that govern universities, politics, and business are portrayed as pocked and pander tongues, whose influence suffocates truth while allowing accountants and advertisers to multiply unchecked.

In its final section, "Pigskin Abbey" pivots toward an urgent plea for justice. The metaphor of the football game transforms into an allegory for the world itself, where justice is the hard runner who must be put into play before it is too late. The grim clock nears its end, and without intervention, fierce atonement follows, marked by the black headlines of scandal and disgrace. The poem concludes on a foreboding note, as the corruption inherent in the game mirrors a broader societal decay, leading to Official Bribed; Star Thwarted; and Goal Crossed—a mockery of both the sport’s and the nation's ideals.

Nims' critique of football extends beyond the game itself to address the larger failures of American culture—its obsession with spectacle, its reverence for power without purpose, and its neglect of intellectual and moral integrity. The poem is a masterful blend of satire and elegy, lamenting a society that, despite its grandeur, seems unable to put captain justice in.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...