Kenneth Koch has been called тАЬone of our greatest poetsтАЭ by John Ashbery, and тАЬa national treasureтАЭ in the 2000 National Book Award Finalist Citation.
Now, for the first time, all of the poems in his ten collectionsтАУfrom Sun Out, poems of the 1950s, to Thank You, published in 1962, to A Possible World, published in 2002, the year of the poetтАЩs deathтАУare 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 memberтАУalong with Frank OтАЩHara, John Ashbery, and James SchuylerтАУof 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: тАЬO what a physical effect it has on me / To dive forever into the light blue sea / Of your acquaintance!тАЭ (тАЬIn Love with YouтАЭ).
Here is KochтАЩs early work: love poems like тАЬThe CircusтАЭ and тАЬTo MarinaтАЭ and such well-remembered comic masterpieces as тАЬFresh Air,тАЭ тАЬSome General Instructions,тАЭ and тАЬThe Boiling WaterтАЭ (тАЬA serious moment for the water is when it boilsтАЭ). And here are the brilliant later poemsтАУтАЬOne Train May Hide Another,тАЭ the deliciously autobiographical address in New Addresses, and the stately elegy тАЬBel CantoтАЭтАУpoems that, beneath a surface of lightness and wit, speak with passion, depth, and seriousness to all the most important moments in oneтАЩs existence.
Charles Simic wrote in The New York Review of Books that, for Koch, poetry тАЬhas to be constantly saved from itself. The idea is to do something with language that has never been done before.тАЭ In the ten exuberant, hilarious, and heartbreaking books of poems collected here, Kenneth Koch does exactly that.