I enjoyed these two poems, I like how the two poems are both about sports, because i am a big sports fan. They both compare two athletes but in very different perspectives. So these poems compare and contrast. They compare because they both deal with town athletes. In each poem each athlete is young and somehow saves their town with their skills.So they both look like heroes to everyone else. But also both the athlete’s careers are cut short. So that’s another thing these poems share. Each sport talent doesn’t carry them far enough in life. One final comparison between “To an athlete dying young” & “Ex-basketball player” is that both young athletes held unbeatable records in their communities. So that represents that each athlete had a special
