The Best American Poetry

From the Archives: The terrifying poetry of ping-pong (by Mitch Sisskind)

No Olympic sport is more maddening than ping-pong (I refuse to call it "table tennis.") The way the ball will just nick the corner of the table can drive anyone mad -- especially poets, who are sensitive people by nature.

Kenneth Koch was probably one of the best ping-pong playing poets ever. Had there been an Olympic event combining the two disciplines, I'm certain Koch would have taken home the gold medal. I'm also certain he would have loved the challenge of playing ping-pong while reciting improvised sonnets, or whatever. Well, we will see that in the Upper World!

But Koch was not beyond criticism as a ping-pong player. I'm still kicking myself that I did not actually see the match, but I recall speaking with David Shapiro shortly after he had played Koch in the basement of the now-disappeared Ferris Booth Hall at Columbia. Koch had won the game, but David felt -- and I'm sure he was correct about this -- that Koch had, um, bent the rules a little. Specifically, it was my impression that Koch had tried to create distractions while the ball was in David's court, and I recall David using the term "flapping ostrich."

In Koch's defense, he very often acted like a flapping ostrich -- so should he be expected to stop acting like one when he played ping-pong? We'll have to leave that question to a higher authority. Actually, I believe Koch was also a pitcher on his high school baseball team (Walnut Hills HS, in Cincinnati) and I'm sure his wind-up was a sight to behold. In any case, I happen to believe that Koch was the greatest poet of the New York school, and I'm absolutely certain that he was the best ping-pong player. (But there were probably some good players among the Beats.)

Here is a video of an intense ping-pong match. Don't try this in your rumpus room.

(Ed note:  A version of this post originally appeared on Wednesday, August 13, 2008)

Live from London! Limbering Up: John Keats as Handball Olympian by Lytton Smith

“This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would […]”

Danny Boyle’s artificial rain cloud has given the rest of the troposphere an idea or two, and our late-arriving British summer is being edged aside by short showers which drum down on the Copper Box, a matchbox-shaped red-brown building on the south edge of theOlympic Park. As poet and Trappist monk Thomas Merton knew, the rain is a rumormonger, “all the speech pouring down.” We’ve experienced enough Wimbledons on this island to know “it will talk as long as it wants, this rain.” We’re used to listening.

Right now, this rain is talking about events inside the Copper Box, where Iceland’s men’s Handball team (silver medallists in Beijing) has just scored against Argentina. It’s one of those spectacular, made-for-replay Olympic moments where, without warning, something extraordinary happens. #18, Robert Gunnarsson darts into the inner D, the area patrolled by the goalkeeper. A team-mate’s wayward lobbed pass drifts beyond the heads of two Argentine defenders, bobbles awkwardly. Diving forward, at full stretch, headed away from the goal, level to the floor, Gunnarsson grasps the ball and flings it behind him, back over his shoulder, past the helpless, unsighted ’keeper, into the bottom corner of the net. No one saw it coming, least of all the Argentinians, and that’s why the rain’s telling it to the rooftops. Game on.

Continue reading . . .

Headfirst Into The Air (by Laura Orem)

The Olympics are here again, and I can’t rally up much interest. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I keep finding out who won and who lost each event before it’s broadcast (thanks a lot, New York Times). Maybe it’s because, as I’ve written before, there are no characters anymore; everyone is slick, smooth, and tediously decorous. No real drama, not even in the athletic performances, which are uniformly excellent and hinge on the tiniest millisecond.

I used to love to watch the swimming and diving events. I love to swim, even though I’m neither fast nor elegant in form. As for diving, it’s always been a mystery to me how you get good at it without breaking your neck. In fact, I will agree that, even now, of all the summer Olympic sports, diving provides the most suspense, because even a gold-medal diver can misstep or over-rotate, so you catch your breath until she safely slices into the water.

I learned to swim at age five in the Officers Club Pool at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. EA is notorious for two things: LSD experiments on soldiers in the 1960s, and a stockpile of deadly chemical weapons dating back to World War I that they finally disposed of only about ten years ago. My father was a civilian employee who worked on post. We lived in a development a few miles outside the gate, but as a little girl I spent a large chunk of my time on the post grounds themselves.

When I was a kid, no one talked about the tripped-out soldiers or the weapons stockpile; I’m not sure how much of it was publically known in the late sixties. There were “deadly force” areas tucked into remote corners, but they were largely invisible and you had actively go find them. For me, the post was a wonderful place, with shady, tree-lined streets, and deer so tame they’d walk right up to your parked car. There was a riding stable with horses you could pet, and a small airfield where, each 4^th of July, the Rec. folks put on a carnival complete with pony rides, a tiny ferris wheel with four cars, and about twenty-five ramshackle booths. You bought a bunch of tickets for five cents apiece, then you made your rounds. There was Pitch-Til-U-Win, where, if your aim was good and you were lucky, you could win yourself a small pink plastic poodle with sparkling blue eyes, and even if you weren’t, you’d at least end up with a Hawaiian lei made of paper flowers. There was the Wheel-of-Fortune, where if you were very very lucky, you could walk off with a stuffed dog with vinyl ears, and the Pick-a-Duck game, where you could win a straw hat. There was the Spin-Art booth, where you poured primary-colored tempera paint out of Tupperware ketchup bottles onto a piece of spinning cardboard and got your own work of art to hang up on your wall. The air was redolent with sizzling hot dogs (for the kids) and pit-beef sandwiches (for the grownups), and for dessert you had your choice of snowballs or cotton candy. Then, as darkness fell, your dad got the blanket from the car, and the whole family, smelling now of OFF bug spray, headed down to the grass field by the runway to swat mosquitoes and watch the fireworks.

Sharon Dolin: Holiness in Toulouse

I spent the day in Toulouse, which meant there was only so much I could see. Kind of like life. After talking briefly to a couple in Auvillar, Gerhard, originally from Germany, and Marie-Josef, from France, about their project of creating a memorial to the 4 families who were deported to Auschwitz from Auvillar, I had a bit of an edge—more so than usual—when Gerhard described to me that even during the first crusade, in 1095, the French made a decision to lengthen their route to Jerusalem by first going through the area where I am to kill whatever Jews they could find.

Saint Sernin

So here I was setting out and though I always intend to do otherwise, the churches do have a way of drawing me in. First was Saint Sernin, where I stumbled upon a funeral in progress, which meant I got to hear the mournful strains of the organ and to see the priest in his royal purple robe in procession with the mourners. Then a brief visit to the archaeological museum next door. Once there were figures of pagan gods and heroes, I felt a lot more at home.

Hercules and the Erymanthian Boar (4th Labor)

Venus & child (not unlike Madonna & child)

The highlight of the day was the Black Madonna in the Eglise Dourade: a church built over a pagan church.

No one can give a good answer as to why there are black madonnas, but there was a level of devoutness that I witnessed in the women (the black madonna protects pregnant women and mothers in particular) praying to her. She had an aura of mystery and serenity. And when I glanced across at the chapel on the other side, a strange ray of light coming through the stained glass fell on the afternoon wall, making an impressionist painting far superior to anything I had seen in the Capitol buidling earlier that day.

I failed miserably at getting a look inside a synagogue. I was told by phone that everyone was going on vacation. So as I ran to the train station, I snapped a quick picture of the facade of this newish-looking, nondescript synagogue.

Synagogue Palaprat (near the train station)

The hour grows late. I'll save for tomorrow the place that inspired hushed resonance to rival that of any house of worship. (Hint: Think literature.)

Olympics 2012: Liam and Meghan O'Rourke (author and former gymnast) exchange thoughts on Olympics highlights and heartbreak

from Meghan O'Rourke:

I confess that my Irish heart got quite sentimental and soggy when I saw Kieran Behan step on to the floor on Saturday in his leprechaun-green athletic gear. (That part was unfortunate.) Not only is he Irish—Kieran!—but he has overcome enormous adversity to be at the Olympics. And like a true Irishman, he has demonstrated Olympian stubbornness. When he was 10, he found a tumor the size of a golf ball on his leg; the doctors botched the surgery and left him with “permanent” nerve damage. But he learned to walk again — and began training, only to suffer a freak accident: brain damage after hitting his head in a routine fall. Hours and hours of rehab. It only went on from there: first the torn ACL in one knee, then the other; a broken arm; financial straits (he ended up sweeping the gym he trained in); and now a rotator cuff injury. Yet there he was, walking out on the floor mat along with all the other Olympians.

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Monday Cartoon by Nin Andrews

For more of Nin's cartoons go here.

Olympics 2012: Lynn Melnick n Synchronized Swimming and Paisley Rekdal on Archery

(Ed note:  For the next couple of weeks we'll be bringing you the Los Angeles Review of Books coverage of the 2012 Olympics)

On Archery by Paisley Rekdal

FIRST, WE MUST CONSIDER the draw.

This is the amount of weight an archer pulls when drawing a bow: 50 pounds is the average draw for the male Olympian; 20 pounds the average for the female. With a recurve (the Olympic bow of choice), weight increases as the bow is drawn, stopping at its peak weight: imagine, if you will, the strength required to draw, steady, then focus your arrow with 50 pounds of tension weighing on a single arm, all in the hopes of hitting a target at 70 meters in less than 40 seconds. Like many of the Olympics’ less visually spectacular sports (curling comes to mind, though the Norwegian team’s harlequin pants certainly made an impression), archery’s drama is internal; but for those who have ever practiced it, as I have, watching archery reminds us that, while a feat of both instinct and psychology, it is most importantly a sport of stamina. The draw never changes, but your ability to pull efficiently does, and the tendency of your arrow to wobble — a weakness inherent to every shot due to the arrow’s torque — will only increase as you fatigue, even with the aid of a stabilizer. Without training, the draw weight will exhaust you after a few shots. Your target focus will slide, your bowstring fingers callous like a guitar player’s. Most painfully, the tender inner forearm of the hand that grips your bow belly will burn with welts that the bowstring, having released the arrow at 150 miles per hour, raises at it snaps against your exposed flesh like a wet whipcord of Kevlar. Instinctively, you’ll flinch at each release, ruining your shot. You will have to learn to wear an arm and chest guard.

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Sharon Dolin, Guest Blogger

We're pleased that Sharon Dolin will continue posting from southwest France where she is artist in residence at Le Moulin a Nef.  Sharon is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Whirlwind (due out this fall from the University of Pittsburgh Press) and Burn and Dodge  (Pittsburgh, 2008). As well as poetry, Sharon is at work on a book of aphoristic sequences, several of which have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Hotel Amerika, Denver Quarterly, The American Poet, Salamander, and The Kenyon Review Online.  She has poems forthcoming in Poetry along with a Q&A in December. Currently, she teaches at Poets House and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and directs The Center for Book Arts Annual Letterpress Poetry Competition.  Sharon blogs over at Whirlwind.

 Bienvenue, Sharon.

In other news . . .

We're in full Olympic swing here and are thrilled to be collaborating with Gabrielle Calvocoressi and her Olympic team of poet/sports reporters over at the Los Angeles Review of Books.  You'll find our Olympic coverage here, and daily posts at the LARB here. 

Jill Allyn Rosser presents a poem by Steven Cramer

The following poem by Steven Cramer first appeared in New Ohio Review 6, Fall 2009.

 - - - - - - -

                    Bad

 It got bad; pretty bad; then not
so bad; very bad; then back to bad.
Jesus, let’s let things not get even worse. 

A weird fall. Nearly ninety
one day, leaf mold making our house
all red eyes and throats.  Don’t think 

about Thanksgiving, but hope
for a decent Halloween.  Everywhere
gas-powered leaf-blowers growling— 

Christ, let’s let things not get even worse.

 

- - - - - - - -

The first stanza demonstrates what I feel to be the semicolon’s natural tendency to drain drama out of any expression. The semicolon always seems to need a lift, maybe a cup of coffee, or Zoloft.  Whatever the mood may be, a semicolon stunts it, patiently, by increments.  It's so drably un-final, just an incomplete full stop without any conviction. It tells you something more needs to be said, but not urgently.  Just wait; there’s more; I’ll get there, it seems to say. Maybe I’ve changed my mind, it dithers. Enough of my antipathy toward a perfectly useful punctuation mark, but you must admit that first stanza’s failed efforts at precision feel dispirited, as though the speaker is so worn out by the relentless nuances of badness (“not so bad” is as good as it gets) that he can’t muster the energy to come up with another negative word.  And of course we expect something momentous: genocide, icecaps melting, famine…   Whereas the only example revealed to the reader is a few bad cases of hayfever.  I like being surprised by the mundanity of the condition that worsens.  Surely that’s not the only “it” referred to earlier? Maybe; maybe not; but the other accruing bads are probably just as pedestrian.  It’s the accumulation without full respite that overwhelms.

   The increasing intensity (however wan, however enervated) of the speaker’s dread is marked by the progression of “Jesus” in the third line to “Christ” in the final line, as we move from the figure as man to the figure as deity.  Are both names taken in vain? I don’t think so – there’s palpable, prayerful misery behind each utterance, reinforced by the faintly biblical echo in the use of “let” in both lines.  Then there’s the lovely low parade of growling w’s in the penultimate line that helps to augur the apparently inevitable worse.  But the clincher that makes this poem memorable for me is Cramer’s exquisite syntax in “let’s let things not get even worse” as opposed to the more idiomatic “let’s not let things get even worse.”  The latter suggests we have agency; whereas the poem’s syntax reminds us that we have little if any control; all we can do is let things happen and hope for, well – not the worst. Maybe we can’t fully engage in true Thanksgiving, but at least we can have a decent Halloween, scaring ourselves with things that are more dreadful even than our semicoloned lives.

   Is this a downer of a poem?  Not to my mind: its playfully hyperbolized teeth-gritting has a tonic effect.  The tone attained here, in a very short space, reminds me somewhat of Samuel Beckett; of Steven Wright; of Eeyore on a good day. 

   Steven Cramer is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent being Goodbye to the Orchard (Sarabande, 2004).  He directs the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Lesley University.

   See you next week, which let’s let be better!  --JAR

Sports Desk (Olympic Edition): In Praise of The Things I Don't Know [Gabrielle Calvocoressi]

Today, after a few hours of watching Olympic archery and beach volleyball I made my way to Abbott Kinney Blvd. in Venice, got a really perfect iced green tea at Intelligensia Coffee and felt genuinely happy to be alive. That’s surprising in some ways since over the course of the last few weeks I’ve lost my apartment, watched my laptop die not once but twice and moved more deeply into my research for a book of prose I’m writing that focuses on my mother’s suicide and the general and uncomfortable question (for me, anyway) of why she killed herself and why I, seemingly, will not. Suffice to say it’s been a pretty brutal few weeks.

 

I think I feel so great because of the Olympics. I’ve got to say I love all of it, starting with the trials and continuing right onto the opening ceremonies last night. I gather a lot of folks didn’t like the Opening Ceremonies but I thought the James Bond bit was funny and the fireworks were great. And how can you not love all those athletes smiling and taking photos and marching alongside their teams of 200 or 20 or 2? I love that there’s an Independent Olympic Athlete’s delegation for athletes like South Sudanese runner Guor Marial, who can’t run for South Sudan because the newly formed country doesn’t have an Olympic body and will not run under the flag of Sudan because as says, "My family lost 28 members in the war with Sudan. Millions of my people were killed by Sudan forces. I can only forgive, but I cannot honor and glorify a country that killed my people." I love that every single Olympic team has at least one woman athlete (a first) and that, for the first time, the American team has more women than men. And I love Caster Semenya’s raised fist as she walked into the stadium holding her flag.

Which is to say, I love that tremendous joy and unspeakable tragedy can live in the same body and in the same moment of time. When it’s packaged by the media this balance can be destroyed and come off as melodrama. But one can simply go back to the athletes themselves as they do what they do best and find all of these seemingly opposing forces working themselves into something extraordinary. Take gymnast John Orozco, who I really don’t know much about. I learned about him during the months leading up to the games. One Saturday I was having some trouble getting out of my pajamas to go to the coffee shop and write. I may have been having some trouble doing a number of things related to going outdoors. I turned on the television in hopes of finding some baseball or bull riding. I wanted to watch someone do something super hard and make it look effortless. And I wanted to watch closely enough that I could begin to see the decisions they were making that made it look so much easier than it was. It calms me to do that. I thought it might get me up and out the door. Neither sport was on and didn’t want to see some comedy or light movie so I looked at the guide and saw the men’s gymnastic trials were on. Though it may have been a competition leading up to the trials. As I’ve said, I was and am new to gymnastics and the world of the trials. I didn’t really care. I pulled the blanket over myself and started watching.

And there was John Orozco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the course of the afternoon I found out John Orozco is from the Bronx.  His father suffered a major stroke, which forced him to retire from his job at the sanitation department. His mother suffers from lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and, according to her son, is in pain all the time, which did not keep her from driving the hour round trip most days of the week to get him to gymnastics practice. Terrible things. Things you don’t recover from. I listened to the commentators at the same time that I watched John Orozco do the most remarkable things with his body. I watched him get very still and then burst into motion. What struck me was that the beauty of what he was doing didn’t undo any of the darkness of the story. The things that were broken would stay broken and the beauty and achievement would live alongside it. And together they would make a young man’s life. I decided I’d make sure to watch him during the Olympics because he had a lot to teach me about what it is to be an adult. And I did get up and go to the coffee shop, which oddly enough I almost omitted from this piece because it sounds sort of clichéd but like most clichés it’s actually true.

Over the next two weeks I’ll be wearing various hats here at Sports Desk. I’ll be writing short bits about the Olympics at the end of each day and I’ll be thinking about the sorts of things I want to talk about as I return to this space on a monthly basis after a long time away. I’ll also be featuring a great project I’m working on as the Poetry Editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books. Because I’ve been looking forward to the Olympics and thinking about all the things I don’t know, I thought I’d ask some amazing poets and poet-critics to help me make sense of the balance of formal rigor and unabashed optimism that it takes to be an Olympian and a poet. The Best American Poetry is our partner in this project and will be featuring all the essays published at LARB. And we'll be having Olympic adventures at Sports Desk as well. And the team can keep growing, so lend me your voice.

 

When the team from Great Britain entered the stadium David Bowie’s, “Heroes” started to play. I’ve had that song in my head for weeks, though I’m not sure I really know what the term means. I look forward to trying to find out. I think it’s going to take a whole team.