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Selected Poems
Kenneth Koch, in the words of editor Ron Padgett, wrote poetry that became a part of “the mystery and pleasure of being alive.” A center of the New York School, he gained notoriety by mocking the stodginess and academicism of much mid-century verse.
This enthralling selection encompasses the full range of Koch’s poetry, and includes such already classic works as “Fresh Air” (his devastatingly satirical assault on mid-1950s poetic conformism), “The Pleasure of Peace” (with its defiant assertion that “One single piece of pink mint chewing gum contains more pleasures / Than the whole rude gallery of war!”), “The Art of Poetry,” his astonishing and light-footed survey of the aims and methods of poetry, and poems from the late collection New Addresses , including “To World War Two,” “To Psychoanalysis,” and “To the French Language.”
A poet at once directly accessible and deeply mysterious, Kenneth Koch was the master of an art of surprise in which the world is constantly reimagined.
About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.
This enthralling selection encompasses the full range of Koch’s poetry, and includes such already classic works as “Fresh Air” (his devastatingly satirical assault on mid-1950s poetic conformism), “The Pleasure of Peace” (with its defiant assertion that “One single piece of pink mint chewing gum contains more pleasures / Than the whole rude gallery of war!”), “The Art of Poetry,” his astonishing and light-footed survey of the aims and methods of poetry, and poems from the late collection New Addresses , including “To World War Two,” “To Psychoanalysis,” and “To the French Language.”
A poet at once directly accessible and deeply mysterious, Kenneth Koch was the master of an art of surprise in which the world is constantly reimagined.
About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published April 5, 2007
6 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
Kenneth Koch
110 books88 followersKenneth Koch is most often recognized as one of the four most prominent poets of the 1950s-1960s poetic movement "the New York School of Poetry" along with Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery and James Schuyler. The New York School adopted the avant-garde movement in a style often called the "new" avant-garde, drawing on Abstract Expressionism, French surrealism and stream-of-consciousness writing in the attempt to create a fresh genre free from cliché. In his anthology The New York Poets, Mark Ford writes, "In their reaction against the serious, ironic, ostentatiously well-made lyric that dominated the post-war poetry scene, they turned to the work of an eclectic range of literary iconoclasts, eccentrics and experimenters."
Fiercely anti-academic and anti-establishment, Koch's attitude and aesthetic were dubbed by John Ashbery his "missionary zeal." Ford calls him "the New York School poet most ready to engage in polemic with the poetic establishment, and the one most determined to promote the work of himself and his friends to a wider audience." Koch died of leukemia at age 77, leaving a legacy of numerous anthologies of both short and long poems, avant-garde plays and short stories, in addition to nonfiction works dealing with aesthetics and teaching poetry to children and senior citizens.
Fiercely anti-academic and anti-establishment, Koch's attitude and aesthetic were dubbed by John Ashbery his "missionary zeal." Ford calls him "the New York School poet most ready to engage in polemic with the poetic establishment, and the one most determined to promote the work of himself and his friends to a wider audience." Koch died of leukemia at age 77, leaving a legacy of numerous anthologies of both short and long poems, avant-garde plays and short stories, in addition to nonfiction works dealing with aesthetics and teaching poetry to children and senior citizens.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 20, 2024
Oh Kenneth
You like everything
To be pleasant. I was burning
Like an arch
Made out of trees.
To Marina is one of my favourite poems ever. And all the other ones are just ok ranging to really not enjoyable especially because I hate when writers write about writing.
You like everything
To be pleasant. I was burning
Like an arch
Made out of trees.
To Marina is one of my favourite poems ever. And all the other ones are just ok ranging to really not enjoyable especially because I hate when writers write about writing.
January 23, 2008
I have known his name like forever, yet this is the first time I actually read his poetry. While reading it I thought of Cole Porter. Why? Well both are playful with the English language, but there is also something witty and Manhatan like in their approach to the language.
I also like how Koch is extremely serious but yet his writing is lightful --- like a delicate baked good. He doesn't punch your head in, but instead he goes off on these poems as a foundation - and eventually he comes back to its theme. He is sort of like a really interesting guy in a bar, who sometimes loses the main thread but eventually will get back to it.
Also his poem about writing poetry is fantastic. He's a major in a world full of minors.
I also like how Koch is extremely serious but yet his writing is lightful --- like a delicate baked good. He doesn't punch your head in, but instead he goes off on these poems as a foundation - and eventually he comes back to its theme. He is sort of like a really interesting guy in a bar, who sometimes loses the main thread but eventually will get back to it.
Also his poem about writing poetry is fantastic. He's a major in a world full of minors.
July 18, 2020
Te amo, Kenneth
January 29, 2022
I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails
In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from
The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;
I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields
Always, to be near you, even in my heart
When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you
Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to
The place where I again think of you, a new
Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow
Of a ship which sails
From Hartford to Miami, and I love you
Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun
Receives me in the questions which you always pose.
* * *
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
* * *
I have a bird in my head and a pig in my stomach
And a flower in my genitals and a tiger in my genitals
And a lion in my genitals and I am after you but I have a song in my heart
And my song is a dove
I have man in my hands I have a woman in my shoes
I have a landmark decision in my reason
I have a death rattle in my nose I have summer in my brain water
I have dreams in my toes
This is the matter with me and the hammer of my mother and father
Who created me with everything
But I lack clam I lack rose
Though I do not lack extreme delicacy of rose petal
Who is it that I wish to astonish?
In the birdcall I found a reminder of you
But it was thin and brittle and gone in an instant
Has nature set out to be a great entertainer?
Obviously not a great reproducer? A great Nothing?
Well I will leave that up to you
I have a knocking woodpecker in my heart and I think I have three souls
One for love one for poetry and one for acting out my insane self
Not insane but boring but perpendicular but untrue but true
The three rarely sing together take my hand it’s active
The active ingredient in it is a touch
I am Lord Byron I am Percy Shelley I am Ariosto
I eat the bacon I went down the slide I have a thunderstorm in my inside I will never hate you
But how can this maelstrom be appealing? do you like menageries? my god
Most people want a man! So here I am
I have a pheasant in my reminders I have a goshawk in my clouds
Whatever is it which has led all these animals to you?
A resurrection? or maybe an insurrection? an inspiration?
I have a baby in my landscape and I have a wild rat in my secrets from you.
* * *
In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica
one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide
another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The
obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or
the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love fingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the
Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A
Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be
important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.
* * *
Leo bends over his desk
Gazing at a memorandum
While Stuart stands beside him
With a smile, saying,
"Leo, the order for those desks
Came in today
From Youngstown Needle and Thread!"
C. Loth Inc., there you are
Like Balboa the conqueror
Of those who want to buy office furniture
Or bar fixtures
In nineteen forty in Cincinnati, Ohio!
Secretaries pound out
Invoices on antique typewriters—
Dactyllographs
And fingernail biters.
I am sitting on a desk
Looking at my daddy
Who is proud of but feels unsure about
Some aspects of his little laddie.
I will go on to explore
Deep and/or nonsensical themes
While my father's on the dark hardwood floor
Hit by a couple of Ohio sunbeams.
Kenny, he says, some day you'll work in the store.
But I felt "never more" or "never ever"
Harvard was far away
World War Two was distant
Psychoanalysis was extremely expensive
All of these saved me from you.
C. Loth you made my father happy
I saw his face shining
He laughed a lot, working in you
He said to Miss Ritter
His secretary
"Ritt, this is my boy, Kenny!"
"Hello there Kenny," she said
My heart in an uproar
I loved you but couldn't think
Of staying with you
I can see the virtues now
That could come from being in you
A sense of balance
Compromise and acceptance—
Not isolated moments of brilliance
Like a girl without a shoe,
But someone that you
Care for every day—
Need for customers and the economy
Don't go away.
There were little pamphlets
Distributed in you
About success in business
Each about eight to twelve pages long
One whole series of them
All ended with the words
"P.S. He got the job"
One a story about a boy who said,
"I swept up the street, Sir,
Before you got up." Or
"There were five hundred extra catalogues
So I took them to people in the city who have a dog"—
P.S. He got the job.
I didn't get the job
I didn't think that I could do the job
I thought I might go crazy in the job
Staying in you
You whom I could love
But not be part of
The secretaries clicked
Their Smith Coronas closed at five p.m.
And took the streetcars to Kentucky then
And I left too.
* * *
There is no way not to be excited
When what you have been disillusioned by raises its head
From its arms and seems to want to talk to you again.
You forget home and family
And set off on foot or in your automobile
And go to where you believe this form of reality
May dwell. Not finding it there, you refuse
Any further contact
Until you are back again trying to forget
The only thing that moved you (it seems) and gave what you forever will
have
But in the form of a disillusion.
Yet often, looking toward the horizon
There — inimical to you? — is that something you have never found
And that, without those who came before you, you could never have
imagined.
How could you have thought there was one person who could make you
Happy and that happiness was not the uneven
Phenomenon you have known it to be? Why do you keep believing in this
Reality so dependent on the time allowed it
That it has less to do with your exile from the age you are
Than from everything else life promised that you could do?
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails
In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from
The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;
I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields
Always, to be near you, even in my heart
When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you
Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to
The place where I again think of you, a new
Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow
Of a ship which sails
From Hartford to Miami, and I love you
Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun
Receives me in the questions which you always pose.
- To You, pg. 1-2
* * *
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy, and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
- Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams, pg. 10-11
* * *
I have a bird in my head and a pig in my stomach
And a flower in my genitals and a tiger in my genitals
And a lion in my genitals and I am after you but I have a song in my heart
And my song is a dove
I have man in my hands I have a woman in my shoes
I have a landmark decision in my reason
I have a death rattle in my nose I have summer in my brain water
I have dreams in my toes
This is the matter with me and the hammer of my mother and father
Who created me with everything
But I lack clam I lack rose
Though I do not lack extreme delicacy of rose petal
Who is it that I wish to astonish?
In the birdcall I found a reminder of you
But it was thin and brittle and gone in an instant
Has nature set out to be a great entertainer?
Obviously not a great reproducer? A great Nothing?
Well I will leave that up to you
I have a knocking woodpecker in my heart and I think I have three souls
One for love one for poetry and one for acting out my insane self
Not insane but boring but perpendicular but untrue but true
The three rarely sing together take my hand it’s active
The active ingredient in it is a touch
I am Lord Byron I am Percy Shelley I am Ariosto
I eat the bacon I went down the slide I have a thunderstorm in my inside I will never hate you
But how can this maelstrom be appealing? do you like menageries? my god
Most people want a man! So here I am
I have a pheasant in my reminders I have a goshawk in my clouds
Whatever is it which has led all these animals to you?
A resurrection? or maybe an insurrection? an inspiration?
I have a baby in my landscape and I have a wild rat in my secrets from you.
- Alive for an Instant, pg. 45-46
* * *
In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica
one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide
another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another—one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple—this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The
obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or
the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love fingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the
Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading A
Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be
important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.
- One Train May Hide Another, pg. 113-116
* * *
Leo bends over his desk
Gazing at a memorandum
While Stuart stands beside him
With a smile, saying,
"Leo, the order for those desks
Came in today
From Youngstown Needle and Thread!"
C. Loth Inc., there you are
Like Balboa the conqueror
Of those who want to buy office furniture
Or bar fixtures
In nineteen forty in Cincinnati, Ohio!
Secretaries pound out
Invoices on antique typewriters—
Dactyllographs
And fingernail biters.
I am sitting on a desk
Looking at my daddy
Who is proud of but feels unsure about
Some aspects of his little laddie.
I will go on to explore
Deep and/or nonsensical themes
While my father's on the dark hardwood floor
Hit by a couple of Ohio sunbeams.
Kenny, he says, some day you'll work in the store.
But I felt "never more" or "never ever"
Harvard was far away
World War Two was distant
Psychoanalysis was extremely expensive
All of these saved me from you.
C. Loth you made my father happy
I saw his face shining
He laughed a lot, working in you
He said to Miss Ritter
His secretary
"Ritt, this is my boy, Kenny!"
"Hello there Kenny," she said
My heart in an uproar
I loved you but couldn't think
Of staying with you
I can see the virtues now
That could come from being in you
A sense of balance
Compromise and acceptance—
Not isolated moments of brilliance
Like a girl without a shoe,
But someone that you
Care for every day—
Need for customers and the economy
Don't go away.
There were little pamphlets
Distributed in you
About success in business
Each about eight to twelve pages long
One whole series of them
All ended with the words
"P.S. He got the job"
One a story about a boy who said,
"I swept up the street, Sir,
Before you got up." Or
"There were five hundred extra catalogues
So I took them to people in the city who have a dog"—
P.S. He got the job.
I didn't get the job
I didn't think that I could do the job
I thought I might go crazy in the job
Staying in you
You whom I could love
But not be part of
The secretaries clicked
Their Smith Coronas closed at five p.m.
And took the streetcars to Kentucky then
And I left too.
- To My Father's Business, pg. 154-156
* * *
There is no way not to be excited
When what you have been disillusioned by raises its head
From its arms and seems to want to talk to you again.
You forget home and family
And set off on foot or in your automobile
And go to where you believe this form of reality
May dwell. Not finding it there, you refuse
Any further contact
Until you are back again trying to forget
The only thing that moved you (it seems) and gave what you forever will
have
But in the form of a disillusion.
Yet often, looking toward the horizon
There — inimical to you? — is that something you have never found
And that, without those who came before you, you could never have
imagined.
How could you have thought there was one person who could make you
Happy and that happiness was not the uneven
Phenomenon you have known it to be? Why do you keep believing in this
Reality so dependent on the time allowed it
That it has less to do with your exile from the age you are
Than from everything else life promised that you could do?
- Paradiso, pg. 179-180
November 7, 2023
SIX WORD REVIEW: One Train May Hide Another...whew.
October 1, 2024
A DELIGHT!
August 24, 2007
I really liked Ron Padgett's introduction to Kenneth Koch's Selected. Even for someone like me steeped in Koch, it's informative. I never knew the title of Koch's dissertation, for example.
It's a handy volume, a nice hardback that would be good as a gift.
On the other hand, the selection itself, while excellent, is on the skimpy side. With this particular poet the variety and quality of the work is so great, that it is extremely difficult to represent in so few pages. (Hence 4 stars rather than 5, which the poetry itself merits.)
It's a handy volume, a nice hardback that would be good as a gift.
On the other hand, the selection itself, while excellent, is on the skimpy side. With this particular poet the variety and quality of the work is so great, that it is extremely difficult to represent in so few pages. (Hence 4 stars rather than 5, which the poetry itself merits.)
January 24, 2018
Kenneth Koch is a marvelous, funny, serious poet. The Pleasures of Peace is a gem, as are Some General Instructions. I think that he's lowkey sexist, and his poems are very evidently written by a white man. However, that doesn't mean that his poems aren't some of the most accessible poetic language one can find, and make every thing truly shine. "One single piece of pink mint chewing gum contains more pleasures/ Than the whole rude gallery of war!" Incredible.
January 13, 2016
Mostly like listening to a zeppelin deflate, though every so often something intelligibly charming comes through.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews