- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
-
1 Kindred Spirits -
2 Intimacy in Language -
3 Laughter for Dessert -
4 The Poetry of Ping-Pong -
5 Days of Chess and Backgammon -
6 Inventing a Language for Love -
7 Poetry on the Porch -
8 All My Trials -
9 The AIDS Poets -
10 Oh Did You See the Ashes Come Thickly Falling Down? -
11 The POEMobile Dreams of Peace -
12 Free Market Flavor -
13 The Poetry in Science -
14 Navigating Transitions -
15 The Human Unit of Time -
16 Your Body as Symbol -
17 Intimations of Immortality -
18 God Is in the Details -
19 Breath on the Mirror -
20 The Best Stories versus My Story -
21 The Grease Lamp’s Flicker and Flare -
22 Lion’s Gate -
23 Rock and Word - For Further Reading
- Permissions
The Poetry of Ping-Pong
The Poetry of Ping-Pong
The Art in Sport
- Chapter:
- (p.55) 4 The Poetry of Ping-Pong
- Source:
- The Poetry of Everyday Life
- Author(s):
Steve Zeitlin
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
In this chapter, the author looks at the poetry of Ping-Pong, his favorite sport. According to Marty Reisman, the game of Ping-Pong died in Bombay, India, in 1952. Reisman, nicknamed “The Needle,” was favored to win the World Table Tennis Championship that day. The author says he has always loved Ping-Pong because you can get into a rhythm, hit the ball back and forth across the net for hours, with any racquet, and simply talk. Ping-Pong, like poetry, is a players' sport, not ideal for spectators. Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, claims that there is palpable humor in the game. With Ping-Pong, the author insists that we are all capable of attuning ourselves to the hidden life of sports, a relationship that is about kinesthesia and embodiment.
Keywords: poetry, Ping-Pong, Marty Reisman, rhythm, humor, sports, kinesthesia, embodiment, World Table Tennis Championship
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
-
1 Kindred Spirits -
2 Intimacy in Language -
3 Laughter for Dessert -
4 The Poetry of Ping-Pong -
5 Days of Chess and Backgammon -
6 Inventing a Language for Love -
7 Poetry on the Porch -
8 All My Trials -
9 The AIDS Poets -
10 Oh Did You See the Ashes Come Thickly Falling Down? -
11 The POEMobile Dreams of Peace -
12 Free Market Flavor -
13 The Poetry in Science -
14 Navigating Transitions -
15 The Human Unit of Time -
16 Your Body as Symbol -
17 Intimations of Immortality -
18 God Is in the Details -
19 Breath on the Mirror -
20 The Best Stories versus My Story -
21 The Grease Lamp’s Flicker and Flare -
22 Lion’s Gate -
23 Rock and Word - For Further Reading
- Permissions