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)

Comments

[Marian Crane]

I totally agree. He had splendid reflexes and really understood the game as a table (or horizontal) version of lawn tennis, a phrase that made him pun on Lord Tennyson, and competitive but not quite like the Egyptologist who payed pinball with his current or former students with the ferocity and single-mindedness of a concert pianist. Anyway I appreciate the distraction. It's been a long day and I have driven in the rain and finally found a motel and damn do I need a shower. See ya later.

[Jordan Davis]

I reject the suggestion that Koch needed distraction gambits to win at table tennis. He was an extremely focused competitor who used all of the table.

As for his ranking, I have not had it confirmed whether he ever played ping pong against Ron Padgett, Gary Lenhart, or Chris Edgar, three tennis-playing New York School poets. I'll ask.

[Sal Paolantangeli]

I had Kock in a class called "The Comic in Literature" where the reading list included Svevo, Borges, Firbank, Waugh, Huxley, Machado de Assis, also a German and maybe a Pole and a Russian, and there was a ping pong table in the basement of Ferris Booth Hall right near the bowling alleys, where I beat him in ping pong, Mitch.

[jim c]

Sal, you're up against a legend here, and you have no film. I'm interested in one of those computer matches, where the past legend meets the current legend. I'm thinking specifically of novelist and critic, Tom LeClair, who has adopted the role of Professor Ping Pong (donning red suspenders and red bowtie) on Friday nights at Susan Sarandon's pong nightclub, SPiN. LeClair, a retired (but not, alas, retiring) English professor, has serious pp creds, including a 1600 official ranking and a wicked, almost non-returnable serve. He also takes on all comers on Tuesdays and Thursdays at King Pong, an establishment just up the street from the nightclub in the news recently for being trashed by the entourages of rappers Chris Brown and Drake. I think LeClair beats Koch, hands down. Or up, if you prefer. Sal, drop by KP some afternoon, see how you do.