Ali, Moore, poets

Marianne Moore writes about Muhammad Ali:

He is neat. His brow is high. If beaten, he is still not “beat.” He fights and he writes.

    Is there something I have missed?
    He is a smiling pugilist .

From George Plimpton’s account of Ali (then Cassius Clay) and Moore at Toots Shor’s Restaurant, where they collaborated on a poem. You can read the whole story via Google Books. Moore’s sentences reappear in her liner notes for Ali’s 1963 spoken-word LP I Am the Greatest .

A related post
Carlo Rotella on Muhammad Ali, Homer, and translation

[Muhammad Ali dies yesterday at the age of seventy-four.]