Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch has been called â€œone of our greatest poetsâ€ by John Ashbery, and â€œa national treasureâ€ in the 2000 National Book Award Finalist Citation. ,Now, for the first time, all of the poems in his ten collectionsâ€“from ,Sun Out,, poems of the 1950s, to ,Thank You,, published in 1962, to ,A Possible World,, published in 2002, the year of the poetâ€™s deathâ€“are gathered in one volume.,Celebrating the pleasures of friendship, art, and love, the poetry of Kenneth Koch has been dazzling readers for fifty years. Charter memberâ€“along with Frank Oâ€™Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuylerâ€“of the New York School of poets, avant-garde playwright and fiction writer, pioneer teacher of writing to children, Koch gave us some of the most exciting and aesthetically daring poems of his generation.,These poems take sensuous delight in the life of the mind and the heart, often at the same time: â€œO what a physical effect it has on me / To dive forever into the light blue sea / Of your acquaintance!â€ (â€œIn Love with Youâ€).,Here is Kochâ€™s early work: love poems like â€œThe Circusâ€ and â€œTo Marinaâ€ and such well-remembered comic masterpieces as â€œFresh Air,â€ â€œSome General Instructions,â€ and â€œThe Boiling Waterâ€ (â€œA serious moment for the water is when it boilsâ€). And here are the brilliant later poemsâ€“â€œOne Train May Hide Another,â€ the deliciously autobiographical address in ,New Addresses,, and the stately elegy â€œBel Cantoâ€â€“poems that, beneath a surface of lightness and wit, speak with passion, depth, and seriousness to all the most important moments in oneâ€™s existence.,Charles Simic wrote in ,The New York Review of Books, that, for Koch, poetry â€œhas to be constantly saved from itself. The idea is to do something with language that has never been done before.â€ In the ten exuberant, hilarious, and heartbreaking books of poems collected here, Kenneth Koch does exactly that.
Poetry,Fiction,Literature,American,Contemporary,Classics
The Collected Poems