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.

Thanks, David. Envy is a constant in Poetryland, most definitely, and as toxic there as anywhere else. If I were going to have a complaint, which I'm not, but speaking hypothetically, it would be that poetry can always be grander, livelier, and truer than it has been. The concern with status and the next opportunity each poet feels seems, hypothetically of course, to get in the way of everyone's total focus on being delightful. As we know, and contrary to this hypothetical complaint, poetry is too strong too resilient to be kept down by poets for too long. It breaks through.