Students can also check the English Summary to revise with them during exam preparation.
The Ball Poem Summary Line By Line Explanation in English
About the Poet John Berryman
John Berryman (1914-1972) was an American poet and scholar. He is best known for the Dream Songs (1969) which was a sequence of 385 poems. He won Pulitzer Prize for the dream songs. He also won the National book award.
| Poet Name | John Berryman |
| Born | 25 October 1914, McAlester, Oklahoma, United States |
| Died | 7 January 1972, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States |
| Education | Columbia University (1936), Columbia College |
| Awards | Bollingen Prize, National Book Award for Poetry |
Very Short Summary of The Ball Poem in English
This poem “The Ball Poem” is composed of John Berryman and it is about losing something that you love and learning to grow up. It is about a little boy, who, for the first time in his young life, is learning what it is like to experience grief at the loss of a much-beloved possession of his ball.
To us, the loss of a ball is of minor consequence, and our reaction to it is to say, ‘O there are other balls’ but to a little boy, this is not so. A dime, another ball, is worthless. Money is external. It cannot buy back our love, nor replace the things that we love, the things that really matter.
The little boy has lost his ball.
He can buy many new balls but he has a very deep emotional attachment and memories associated with that ball. So he regrets the loss of the ball. The poet is indirectly trying to tell that we should learn how to cope up with the loss and money is external.
We cannot buy memories with money. We all should learn our responsibility and learn to cope up with the loss.
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