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No Lean and Hungry Look on Coffee-House Cassius
By Stephanie Gervis
March 14, 1963
In one of the most bizarre triumphs since P.T. Barnum had two of his midgets ceremonially married at Greenwich Village’s Grace Episcopal Church, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the fight game’s answer to Cyrano de Bergerac held forth last Thursday in an improbable high-noon poetry reading on Bleecker Street. The reading was in preparation for his Madison Square Garden bout with Doug Jones this week.
The scene was the Bitter End, but it looked more like Clancy’s Gym. It was for the press only — there wasn’t room for anyone else. The place was jammed with cigar-smoking sportswriters, old pros who had been covering boxing for decades. They weren’t quite sure where they were. “Is this what they call a beatnik restaurant?” “A coffee house night club,” explained proprietor Fred Weintraub. “Yeah, two drinks and you think you’re at Toots Shor’s!” But whatever their nostalgia for uptown and Toots, they moved right in to the free spread provided by the accommodating management of the “coffee house night club.”
Into the Spotlight
It almost looked like there wouldn’t be any room for the star. But there is always room for Cassius Marcellus Clay. He appeared impeccably in a tuxedo as the clock struck twelve, mounted the little stage, situated himself in the spotlight, and announced, “I’m here to knock out a bum named Jones.” And his room full of straight men responded.
One of the more aesthetic-minded members of the press inquired as to whether the rhythm of Mr. Clay’s poetry helps his rhythm in the ring.
‘Gotta Win’
“After talkin’ so much I gotta win, so it makes it tough on my opponents. Gonna leave the first day I lose …gonna hop the fastest jet out of here … I don’t care if it goes to Russia.” But he didn’t seem worried about any imminent departures. “I’m the world’s greatest fighter — the most outspoken and the boldest and the fastest and the prettiest.” And there was a rhythm to his words.
“Do you consider yourself a beat poet?”
“What do that mean? I’m a country boy.”
“You know, beatniks.”
“Oh, you mean the guys who look like Castro, the ones who look like the Smith Brothers? I’d like to get in a ring with one of them.” And he reminisced about an incident on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, a discussion he had had with a “beatnik.” “He was so ugly, and I was tellin’ him about it.”
Cassius is an honest man. “I’m not talkin’ for my health,” he said. “I’m talkin’ for my wealth. I’m a promoter’s and a sportswriter’s dream!”
Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, seven Village poets, veterans of the coffee house circuit, had seated themselves on the stage at a respectful distance behind boxing’s Lord Byron. There were Howard Ant, who had courageously refrained from shaving off his beard for the occasion, his stable — all girls — Jill Castro, Kathleen Fraser, Diane Wakoski, Betty Taub, Ree Dragonette, and Doe Lindell.
Clay went on talking about himself. “Me and Liston will tangle seven months after I annihilate Jones … I’m too pretty to be hit. Girls don’t like ugly men, so I don’t want to get cut. I’m a party man.”
“Aren’t you surprised to see all these people here?” asked the Madison Square Garden PR man, setting up his star attraction for another line. And he got it.
“I’m not surprised. I’m here.”
Finally, someone noticed that seven other poets were also there, and the reading began. Howard Ant led off with a poem on horse racing with just enough of the Runyonesque to make it recognizable to the audience. Diane Wakoski rose and said she would read a poem called “Cock Fight Under the Magnolias,” and the boys laughed. They listened patiently to Jill Castro on “impressions of a summer day,” Betty Taub on motherhood, Ree Dragonette on love. They suffered it gallantly, knowing that it was a set-up for their boy.
‘To Her Knees’
The only one who gave them what they wanted was Doe Lindell, who, before going on stage, undid the neat bun in which she had had her hair and let fall in a gloriously “beat” mess nearly to her knees. She had a poem she had made up just for Cassius:
Do you have a flag in your palm
A laurel in your hand?
Do we read you to where the Phalarope plays?
Or do we read into you what we desire?
she recited, peering all the while through her hair into the eyes of the celebrated fighter, penetratingly, knowingly. A moment of truth.
“That must be a beatnik poem,” observed Cassius. The boys shouted for an encore and asked for the text.
Finally it was Cassius’ turn. He was the only one whose hands didn’t shake.
“‘Ode to a Champion: Cassius Marcellus Clay,’ by Cassius M. Clay,” he announced, launching into a paean of self-praise too long to quote but full of internal rhymes like “I’ll battle and rattle his bones” and alliterations like “mighty measured blow.”
When he finished someone asked him to do it again.
“What for?” he asked.
“NBC.”
“Nationwide?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
He read it again and shouted to the cameraman, “If I don’t see this on TV, you will fall in fifteen seconds.”
Then they started calling for the girls. “Get the girls! Come on girls, get in closer! Hold his arms up!” And the photographers snapped away at Cassius, two raised arms held up by a bevy of girl poets.
Why did they all do it?
Cassius is an honest man. “I’m not talkin’ for my health,” he said. “I’m talkin’ for my wealth. I’m a promoter’s and a sportswriter’s dream!”
With Restraint
And, of course, the Bitter End did it for the same reasons — but with self-confessed restraint.
“You know,” proprietor Weintraub confided, “they actually wanted me to take the Bitter End banner from outside and hang it on the wall of the stage! I couldn’t do that. I just don’t think it’s right.”
Even the poets did it for the publicity. “Where else could they get an audience like this?”‘ asked Ant. “None of us will ever be in the spotlight,” said Diane Wakoski. She said she wanted to see what it would be like to bask in “reflected glory,” and she found it “crazy, funny, very exciting.” They all recognized that it was, in one sense, a demeaning gimmick. But in another it was a chance to reach a wider audience — and more than that, it was a gas.
And the press, of course, loved it — it was good copy.
So everybody used everybody else, and everybody was happy.
Clay ended his poem by proclaiming himself the “noblest Roman of them all.” Country boy though he may be, he is also the biggest hipster of them all.
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