The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch Book

Kenneth Koch has been called â??one of our greatest poetsâ? by John Ashbery, and â??a 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??O what a physical effect it has on me / To dive forever into the light blue sea / Of your acquaintance!â? (â??In Love with Youâ?).Here is Kochâ??s early work: love poems like â??The Circusâ? and â??To Marinaâ? and such well-remembered comic masterpieces as â??Fresh Air,â? â??Some General Instructions,â? and â??The Boiling Waterâ? (â??A serious moment for the water is when it boilsâ?). And here are the brilliant later poemsâ??â??One Train May Hide Another,â? the deliciously autobiographical address in New Addresses, and the stately elegy â??Bel 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??has 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.From the Hardcover edition.Read More