Kenneth Koch (27 February 1925 – 6 July 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77. He was a prominent poet of the "New York School" of poetry, a loose group of poets including Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery that eschewed contemporary introspective poetry in favor of an exuberant, cosmopolitan style that drew major inspiration from travel, painting, and music. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... Shortcut: WP:NPOVD Articles that have been linked to this page are the subject of an NPOV dispute (NPOV stands for Neutral Point Of View; see below). ... is the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 187th day of the year (188th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... the first thing that was invented was the automatic DILDO. Education grew explosively because of a very strong demand for high school and college education. ... The New York School (synonymous with abstract expressionist painting) was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in New York City. ... Francis Russell OHara (June 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery, James Schuyler and Kenneth Koch, was a key member of what was known as the New York School of poetry. ... John Ashbery John Ashbery (born July 28, 1927) is an American poet. ...

Life

Koch was born Jay Kenneth Koch in Cincinnati, Ohio. He began writing poetry at an early age, discovering the work of Shelley and Keats in his teenage years. At the age of 18, he served in WWII as a U.S. Army infantryman in the Philippines. “Cincinnati” redirects here. ... Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 – July 8, 1822; pronounced ) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language. ... Keats grave in Rome (left). ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The Army is the branch of the United States armed forces which has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ... Infantry of the Royal Irish Rifles during the Battle of the Somme in World War I Infantry or footmen are very highly disciplined and trained soldiers who fight primarily with small arms(rifles), but are trained to use everything from their bare hands to missle systems in order to neutralize...

After his service, he attended Harvard University, where he met future New York School cohort John Ashbery. After graduating from Harvard in 1948, and moving to New York City, Koch studied for and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League. ... The New York School (synonymous with abstract expressionist painting) was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in New York City. ... John Ashbery John Ashbery (born July 28, 1927) is an American poet. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph. ... Alma Mater Columbia University is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. ...

In 1951 he met his first wife, Janice Elwood, at UC Berkeley; they married in 1954 and lived in France and Italy for over a year. Their daughter, Katherine, was born in Rome in 1955. In 1959 he joined the faculty in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, and he taught classes at Columbia for over forty years. The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, UCB, or simply Berkeley) is a prestigious, public, coeducational university situated in the foothills of Berkeley, California to the east of San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate and its bridge. ...

His first wife died in 1981; Koch married his second wife, Karen Culler, in 1994. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. Koch died from a year-long battle with leukemia in 2002. American Academy of Arts and Letters is an organization whose goal is to foster, assist, and sustain an interest in American literature, music, and art. ... Leukemia or leukaemia(Greek leukos λευκός, “white”; aima αίμα, “blood”) (see spelling differences) is a cancer of the blood or bone marrow and is characterized by an abnormal proliferation (production by multiplication) of blood cells, usually white blood cells (leukocytes). ...

Career

While a student at Harvard, Koch won the prestigious Glascock Prize in 1948. The Glascock Poetry Prize is awarded to the winner of the the annual Kathryn Irene Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Contest at Mount Holyoke College, the oldest intercollegiate poetry competition in the United States [1]. // The contest Each year, about six young poets from the nations top colleges and universities are selected...

The 1960s saw his first published books of poetry, but his poetry did not garner wider popular acclaim until the 1970s with his book The Art of Love: Poems (1975). He continued writing poetry and releasing books of poetry up until his death. Koch won the Bollingen Prize for One Train (1994) and On The Great Atlantic Rainway: Selected Poems 1950-1988 (1994), followed closely by the Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award winner New Addresses (2000). The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ... The Bollingen Prize, awarded every two years by the Bollingen Foundation, is a prestigious literary honor bestowed on a poet in recognition of the best book of new verse within the last two years, or for lifetime achievement. ... The Phi Beta Kappa Society is an honor society which considers its mission to be fostering and recognizing excellence in undergraduate liberal arts and sciences. ...

In 1970, Koch released a pioneering book in poetry education, Wishes, Lies and Dreams: Teaching Children To Write Poetry. Over the next 30 years, he followed this book with other books and anthologies on poetry education tailored to teaching poetry appreciation and composition to children, adults, and the elderly.

Koch wrote hundreds of avant-garde plays over the course of his 50 year career, highlighted by drama collections like 1000 Avant-Garde Plays (1988), which only contains 116 plays, many of them only one scene or a few minutes in length. His prose work is highlighted by The Red Robins (1975), a sprawling novel about a group of fighter pilots flying for personal freedom under the leadership of Santa Claus. He also published a book of short stories, Hotel Lambosa (1988), loosely based on and inspired by his world travels. He also produced at least one libretto, and several of his poems have been set to music by composers. A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ... For other uses, see Drama (disambiguation). ... A typical depiction of Santa Claus. ... Antonio Ghislanzoni, nineteenth century Italian librettist. ...

Koch taught poetry at Columbia University, where his classes were popular. His wild humor and intense teaching style, often punctuated by unusual physicality (standing on a table to shout lines by Walt Whitman) and outbursts of vocal performance often drawn from Italian opera, drew non-English majors and alumni. Some of the spirit of these lectures is contained in his final book on poetry education, Making Your Own Days (1998). His students included poets Ron Padgett, David Shapiro, Alan Feldman, David Lehman, Jordan Davis, David Baratier, Loren Goodman, and Carson Cistulli. Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. ... For other uses, see Opera (disambiguation). ... Ron Padgett, born in 1942 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a poet and member of the New York School. ... David Shapiro is the name of: David Shapiro (Economist) David Shapiro (poet) This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... David Lehman (born 1948) is the series editor for The Best American Poetry book series and a poet. ... Carson Cistulli Carson Cistulli (b. ...

His poems were translated in German by the poet Nicolas Born in 1973 for the renowned "red-frame-series" of the Rowohlt Verlag. Nicolas Born (born December 31, 1937 in Duisburg; died December 7, 1979 in Lüchow-Dannenberg) was a German writer. ...

Koch had a brush with the infamous anti-art affinity group, Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, in early January, 1968. During a poetry reading at St. Mark's Church, a member of the group walked in and pointed a handgun at the podium, shouting "Koch!" before firing one blank round. The poet regained his composure and said to the "shooter," "Grow up." Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers (often referred to as simply the Motherfuckers, or UAW/MF) was an anarchist affinity group based in New York City. ... St. ...

Poetry

Koch asked in his poem Fresh Air (1956) why poets were writing about dull subjects with dull forms. Modern poetry was solemn, boring, and uneventful. Koch described poems “Written by the men with their eyes on the myth/ And the missus and the midterms…” He attacked the idea that poetry should be in any way stale.

Koch wrote of how:

 The Waste Land gave the time’s most accurate data, It seemed, and Eliot was the Great Dictator Of literature. One hardly dared to wink Or fool around in any way in poems, And critics poured out awful jereboams To irony, ambiguity, and tension – And other things I do not wish to mention. (Excerpt from ‘'Seasons on Earth',’ 1959) 

Though not against T. S. Eliot, Koch opposed the idea that in order to write poetry one had to be depressed or think that the world is a terrible place. His ideas were developed with close friends Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, along with painters Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers, among others. He once remarked that “Maybe you can almost characterize the poetry of the New York School as having as one of its main subjects the fullness and richness of life and the richness of possibility and excitement and happiness.” In his poem, The Art of Poetry (1975), Koch offered guidelines to writing good poetry. Among his 10 suggestions are “1) Is it astonishing?” and “10) Would I be happy to go to Heaven with this pinned on to my angelic jacket as an entrance show? Oh would I?” Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965), was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. ... Francis Russell OHara (June 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American poet who, along with John Ashbery, James Schuyler and Kenneth Koch, was a key member of what was known as the New York School of poetry. ... Larry Rivers (August 17, 1923 - August 14, 2002) was a Jewish American musician, artist and actor. ...

Koch once remarked that “Children have a natural talent for writing poetry and anyone who teaches them should know that.” In his poems:

1. He mixed word usage with various levels of imagery;
2. He set two contrasting tones next to each other, simplicity and silliness at the same time;
3. He spoke to everything, animate and inanimate objects;
4. He used parody of other poets to express his own views, both serious and comic.

Koch was labeled by some as just a comedic poet. He acknowledged this in an interview and offered his comments:

He gives a picture of this in “To Kidding Around,” where the joys of being a joker are proclaimed:

 To be rid of troubles Of one person by turning into Someone else, moving and jolting As if nothing mattered but today In fact nothing But this precise moment... (Excerpt from To Kidding Around, 2000) 

Selected Works

Days and Nights (1982) From the Air (1979)

Ko: or, A Season on Earth (1959)

On The Edge (1986)

On the Great Atlantic Railway: Selected Poems 1950-88 (1994)

One Train (1994)

Permanently (1961)

Poems (1953)

Poems from 1952 and 1953 (1968)

Seasons on Earth (1987)

Selected Poems 1950-82 (1985)

Sleeping With Women (1969)

Straits (1998)

Thank You and Other Poems (1962)

The Art of Love (1975)

The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951(1979)

The Duplications (1977)

The Pleasures of Peace and Other Poems (1969)

When the Sun Tries to Go On (1969)

References

• Benfey, Christopher. "Wise Guy." The New Republic 13 Mar. 1995: 39-42. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Texas a&M University, College Station, Tx. 25 Oct. 2006. Keyword: Kenneth Koch.
• Block, Avital and Umansky, Lauri. "Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960s." New York: NYU Press, 2005.
• Kenneth Koch. Academy of American Poets. 21 Sept. 2006[1].
• Koch, Kenneth. Interview with David Kennedy. 5 Aug. 1993. 21 Sept. 2006[2]
• Koch, Kenneth. Interview with John Stoehr. City Beat. 17 May 2001. 21 Sept. 2006http://www.citybeat.com/2001-05-17]
• Koch, Kenneth. Selected Poems 1950-1982. First ed. New York: Random House, 1985.
• Koch, Kenneth. The Art of Poetry. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan P, 1996.
• Merrin, Jeredith. "The Poetry Man." The Southern Review: 403-409. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Texas a&M University, College Station, Tx. 3 Oct. 2006. Keyword: Kenneth Koch.
• Pettingell, Phoebe. "The Power of Laughter." The New Leader May-June 2000: 39-41. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Texas a&M University, College Station, Tx. 3 Oct. 2006. Keyword: Kenneth Koch
• Rehak, Melanie. "Dr. Fun." The Nation (2006): 28-32. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Texas a&M University, College Station, Tx. 3 Oct. 2006. Koch.
• Salter, Mary J., Margaret Ferguson, and Jon Stallworthy. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005.