found epigraphs, cont’d.

“. . . Kearns had the fortune to meet the two fighters who in my opinion had the best ring names of all time – Honey Melody and Mysterious Billy Smith. Smith was also a welterweight champion. ‘He was always doing something mysterious,’ Kearns says. ‘Like he would step on your foot, and when you looked down, he would bite you on the ear. If I had a fighter like that now, I could lick heavyweights. . . .”

(A. J. Liebling, The Sweet Science, p.69, quoted in Alice Notley’s notes on Ted Berrigan’s “Sonnet XIX”.)