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The Poetry of Everyday LifeStorytelling and the Art of Awareness$
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The Poetry of Everyday Life: Storytelling and the Art of Awareness

Steve Zeitlin

Print publication date: 2016

Print ISBN-13: 9781501702358

Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: May 2017

DOI: 10.7591/cornell/9781501702358.001.0001

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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
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9781501702358.003.0005

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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