Muhammad Ali and Marianne Moore Wrote a Poem together

  • Moore 1AliMarianneMoore and Ali
    via

    He announced that if she was the greatest poetess in the country, the two of them should produce something together — “I am a poet, too,” he said — a joint effort sonnet, it was to be, with each of them doing alternate lines. Miss Moore nodded vaguely. Ali was very much the more decisive of the pair, picking not only the form but also the topic: “Mrs. Moore and I are going to write a sonnet about my upcoming fight in Houston with Ernie Terrell,” he proclaimed to the table. “Mrs. Moore and I will show the world with this great poem who is who and what is what and who is going to win.”

    “We will call it ‘A Poem on the Annihilation of Ernie Terrell,’ ” Miss Moore announced. “Let us be serious but not grim.”

    “She’s cute,” Ali commented. (read here via )

    After we defeat Ernie Terrell
    He will get nothing, nothing but hell,
    Terrell was big and ugly and tall
    But when he fights me he is sure to fall.
    If he criticize this poem by me and Miss Moore
    To prove he is not the champ she will stop him in four,
    He is claiming to be the real heavyweight champ
    But when the fight starts he will look like a tramp
    He has been talking too much about me and making me sore
    After I am through with him he will not be able to challenge Mrs. Moore.

  • 1abAli1970
    Photo by Danny Lyon – 1970.