The Poet Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali not only hung out with George Plimpton, founding editor of The Paris Review, but according to Plimpton Ali also created the shortest English-language poem (“Me?Whee!!”) and spontaneously wrote a sonnet with modernist poet Marianne Moore (“A Poem on the Annihilation of Ernie Terrell”) The Paris Review blog has more on the encounter. Ali’s world famous boasts could also be seen as poetry, in the same way some battle rap is poetry.