The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch

by Kenneth Koch

Kenneth Koch has been called “one of our greatest poets” by John Ashbery, and “a national treasure” in the 2000 National Book Award Finalist Citation.

Now, for the first time, all of the poems in his ten collections–from Sun Out, poems of the 1950s, to Thank You, published in 1962, to A Possible World, published in 2002, the year of the poet’s death–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 member–along with Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler–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 “O what a physical effect it has on me / To dive forever into the light blue sea / Of your acquaintance!” (“In Love with You”).

Here is Koch’s early love poems like “The Circus” and “To Marina” and such well-remembered comic masterpieces as “Fresh Air,” “Some General Instructions,” and “The Boiling Water” (“A serious moment for the water is when it boils”). And here are the brilliant later poems–“One Train May Hide Another,” the deliciously autobiographical address in New Addresses, and the stately elegy “Bel Canto”–poems that, beneath a surface of lightness and wit, speak with passion, depth, and seriousness to all the most important moments in one’s existence.

Charles Simic wrote in The New York Review of Books that, for Koch, poetry “has to be constantly saved from itself. The idea is to do something with language that has never been done before.” In the ten exuberant, hilarious, and heartbreaking books of poems collected here, Kenneth Koch does exactly that.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, American, Classics, The United States Of America, Poetry Plays, Novels

786 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Kenneth 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.

Reviews

[Christina M Rau · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Kenneth Koch because he's so very different. Some of his stuff reminded me of the Beats. Some other poems were just insane and out of this world and good. Some were, er, uh, different. So to help you out with the K-man, I've narrowed down his over 700 pages to just a few poems you should check out if you want to read him:

The Man

The Brassiere Factory

Fresh Air

Permanently

Variations On A Theme By William Carlos Williams (he redoes the This Is Just To Say poem, a poem that I've redone and a poem that Poetic Goddess has redone as well)

Locks

Sleeping With Women (lots of repetition but it gets charming)

The Magic Of Numbers

The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951

To Marina (this one made me swoon--I filled up with gasps and glee and got all sentimental, amazed that love for one woman could bring someone to write so much, and then I wished I could find someone who would finally devote pages like that to me as I've written so many pages to others who never stick around--and then I got my period so it wasn't only the poem at work but it was the poem plus hormones--still a lovely poem even when the crimson wave has receded)

In Bed (more repetition but reminded me of fortune cookies)

Twenty Poems

One Train May Hide Another (this sounded so familiar and I don't know why)

On Aesthetics

To The Ohio

To My Twenties

To Orgasms (self-explanatory)

I got a lot of good ideas, especially from Kenneth Koch (which, btw, is pronounced Coke--took me a long time to realize that the spelling was different from the sound). Hopefully, I'll be writing into the wee hours soon enough.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the artist Alex Katz (his work is on the cover), so I decided to read this b/c Katz loved Koch's poetry. I enjoy poetry, but most of Koch's work was too verbose + abstract. There were moving phrases like, "I am crazier than shirttails in the wind when you're near," [in the poem To You], and interesting advice, "Someone who excites you should be told so, and loved, if you can, but no one should be able to shake you so much that you wish to give up," but overall...it felt cold and intellectual. Only in the poem To Marina with lines like, "Did I die b/c I didn't stay with you? Or what did I lose of my life? I lost You. I put you in everything I wrote," and "You were the perfection of my life and I couldn't have you. That is, I didn't. I could't think. I wrote, instead," and "Thinking about you, grieving about you. It is the end. I write poems about you, to you. They are no longer simple," and "And now it's been twenty-five years but those feelings keep orchestrating I mean rehearsing, rehearsing in me and tuning up, while I was doing a thousand other things, the band is ready, I am over fifty years old and there's no you--"

Ooooh, the sadness + regret! But then I read poems like The Art of Love (creepy!!) and lines he quotes from Rilke "we love beauty b/c it 'so serenely disdains to destroy us,' and I wonder if Koch's poem The Problem of Anxiety all relates back to his fear of love's engulfment.

In conclusion, if you're a romantic read To Marina and return it to the library.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll admit an impulse buy. It was the Alex Katz portrait on the cover and Kenneth Koch’s reputation as one of the New York School greats. The fact that he reportedly was funny helped, too. Guess what? Reports were accurate. The guy’s a hoot. But more than that he’s an encyclopedia of experience and emotion, never dull if not always clear. This tome of his collected poems doesn’t even include the long ones, his fiction or short plays. I’ll be reading them all. Even after almost 800 pages, Koch didn’t overstay his welcome.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Koch’s graceful indirections have always seemed more goofy and less urgent to me than O’Hara’s or Ashbery’s, with exclamation marks applied like rim shots or air quotes, missing the intensity and tonal ambiguity I respond to in his NY School pals. But there’s a winning lack of pretension—a discipline of not being pretentious—that I think of as Koch’s great virtue as a poet and a person (it’s hard to read these poems without imagining the person, another Koch virtue). Here he is in a characteristic riff on the traditionally heavy subject of “eternity”:

“that word again, you would think I wanted to die, if you didn’t know me better, it is more that in truth I would like to vanish, but into this prose study to live forever here but also be eternally writing, my ideal would be a text that was always writing, but then on the other hand I have never been aware of being interested in that, and I can’t imagine actually as I read it over what it means—I have to get out of this sidetrack: I have something important to say.” (from “More Essouira” in Reflections on Morocco)

There’s Koch: truth via sidetrack and other hands, the text outrunning the basic sadness of mortality, importance deferred so we don’t have to close the book and die.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I now speak of my favorite poets, Kenneth Koch is definitely among the top of my list of favorites. Genius and wildly inconsistent, his work varies from incisive and brilliant meditations to nonsensical jargon. Many of these poems are repetitive or make no sense, but the thrill of reading through this was incomparable to anything else I’ve read. The book I’ve laughed at the most.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are so many clever, funny, & perfect short poems in here. There aren't, however, 745 pages worth: it's like buying the Cassavetes box set when you'd do just fine with Killing of a Chinese Bookie. A selected Koch is probably where to start, and treat this as the B-sides for whatever you liked best (mine, for their humor and O'Hara-like madcap descriptions: New Addresses).

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Collected Poems, although not complete, presents Koch's shorter poems from the following collections: Sun Out: Selected Poems 1952-1954 , Thank You and Other poems , The Pleasures Of Peace And Other Poems , The Art of Love: Poems , The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951 , Days And Nights , One Train: Poems , Straits: Poems , New Addresses , and A Possible World .
Koch's longer poems can be found here: On the Edge: Collected Long Poems .

From Sun Out: Selected Poems 1952-1954 ...

Bananas, piers, limericks
I am postures
Over there, I, are
The lakes of delectation
Sea, sea you! Mars and win-
Some buffalo
They thinly raft the plain,
Common do

It ice-floes, hit-and-run drivers,
The mass of the wind.
Is that snow
H-ing at the door? And we
Come in the buckle, a
Vanquished distinguished
Secret festival, relieving flights
Of the black brave ocean.

- Sun Out, pg. 5

From Thank You and Other poems ...

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.

- To You, pg. 80

From The Pleasures Of Peace And Other Poems ...

The thing
To do
Is organize
The sea
So boats will
Automatically float
To their destinations.
Ah, the Greeks
Thought of that!
Well, what if
They
Did? We have no
Gods
Of the wind!
And therefore
Must use
Silence!

- Poem, pg.

From The Art of Love: Poems ...

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. 247

From The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951 ...

Out the window, the cow out the window
The steel frame out the window, the rusted candlestand;
Out the window the horse, the handle-less pan,
Real things. Inside the window my heart
That only beats for you - a verse of Verlaine.
Inside the window of my heart is a style
And a showplace of onion-like construction.
Inside the window is a picture of a cat
And outside the window is the cat indeed
Jumping up now to the top of the
Roof of the garage; its paws help take it there.
Inside this window is a range
Of things which outside the window are like stars
Arranged but huge in fashion.
Outside the window is a car, is the rusted wheel of a bicycle.
Inside it are words and paints; outside, smooth hair
Of a rabbit, just barely seen. Inside the glass
Of this window is a notebook, with little marks,
They are words. Outside this window is a wall
With little parts - they are stones. Inside this window
Is the start, and outside is the beginning. A heart
Beats. The cat leaps. The room is light, the sun is almost blinding.
Inside this body is a woman, inside whom is a star
Of some kind or other, which is like a uterus; and
Outside the window a farm machine starts.

- The Simplicity of the Unknown Past, pg. 306

From Days And Nights ...

Sweeping past the florist's came the baby and the girl
I am the girl! I am the baby!
I am the florist who is filled with mood!
I am the mood. I am the girl who is inside the baby
For it is a baby girl. I am old style of life. I am the new
Everything as well. I am the evening in which you docked your first kiss.
And it came to the baby. And I am the boyhood of the girl
Which she never has. I am the florist's unknown baby
He hasn't had one yet. The florist is in a whirl
So much excitement, section, outside his shop
Or hers. Who is he? Where goes the baby? She
Is immensely going to grow up. How much
Does this rent for? It's more than a penny. It's more
Than a million cents. My dear, it is life itself. Roses?
Chrysanthemums? If you can't buy them I'll give
Them for nothing. Oh no, I can't.
Maybe my baby is allergic to their spores.
So then the girl and her baby go away. Florist stands whistling
Neither inside nor outside thinking about the mountains of Peru.

- Girl and Baby Florist Sidewalk Pram Nineteen Seventy Something, pg. 389

From One Train: Poems ...

I could never have had anything
Quite as radical as all this
Was by reason of having known it
Was very soon to go away
As that movie went away from the little theatre
Crossed by our liberal eyes

The other glass by the beam
Orphaning the house with its bulbs
Its way-walks like tusks
And the cut-up scenes
That straightened the glasses
The steam that shows is knowing everything
Is the fax to a fax of itself

At daytime water came unsyphoned
Spoofing our house
I wore a net necktie a button
Or trees with a breeze for a mouth
But nothing could prevent it
As nothing north or south

A bagpipe failed you like Elijah
Women came forth
Reading and tacking fishnets to a port
An old woman rode in a hansom
Beer was an invidious sport

Idiot agreement - and summer tide
These seemed like works to be taught
One kept walking
"Yours to tour but mine to seek from birth"
Cadillac wrecked
Forgotten and evenings
Boat-flat similar and signed: "No one else."

- No One Else, pg. 484

From Straits: Poems ...

Botticelli lived
In a little house
In Florence
Italy
He went out
And painted Aphrodite
Standing on some air
Above a shell
On some waves
And he felt happy
He
Went into a café
And cried
I'll buy
Everybody a drink
And for me
A punt e mes
Celebrities thronged
To look at his painting
Never had anyone seen
So beautiful a painted girl
The real girl he painted
The model
For Aphrodite sits
With her chin in her hand
Her hand on her wrist
Her elbow
On a table
And she cries,
"When I was
Naked I was believed,
Will be, and am."

- Vous Êtes Plus Beaux Que Vous Ne Pensiez, 1, pg. 522

From New Addresses ...

At dusk light you come to bat
As Georg Trakl might put it. How are you doing
Aside from that, aside from the fact
That you are at bat? What balls are you going to hit
Into the outfield, what runs will you score,
And do you think you ever will, eventually,
Bat one out of the park? That would be a thrill
To you and your contemporaries! Your mighty posture
Takes its stand in my chest and swing swing swing
Your warm up, then you take a great step
Forward as the ball comes smashing toward you, home
Plate. And suddenly it is evening.

- To My Heart at the Close of Day, pg. 641

From A Possible World ...

Pure finality of bedding -
Intellectual life -
This article to reassure me -
Others are alive -
Then unexpectedly awake
Middle of the night -
What are they thinking -
Afraid? Probably. Succeeding
At something? Likely -
All night
Breathing, rain.

- A Review, pg. 663

[Anastasiia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of poetry, with some masterpieces between the mediocre works. Some poems (in love with you, on beauty, the seasons) made me gasp. I enjoyed seeing the evolution of Koch’s work as the book progressed. He’s a wonderful poet to study.

[Troy S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if I've read everything in this yet, but I'm finally at the point where I can flip to a random page and remember what I thought of the poems on both sides of it. Its been a particular pleasure to watch Koch grow, and to have read Making Your Own Days as a companion piece as well.

If you're new to Koch, may I suggest you read this backwards? The early stuff takes quite a bit of patience, especially if you're not terribly used to more experimental poetry, but becomes more poignant when you know what he is getting at. Gaah, it was such a pleasure to watch him find his own voice :)

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kenneth Koch... I recently was asked to lecture in China on "What is American about American poetry?" Yes, I did get to Whitman, and others--but the first poem I read them was one by Kenneth Koch. I especially love his book of second person poems, New Addresses, but you might as well get the full set. Reading this book is like walking a beach with a metal detector and striking treasure every yard or so. For a poetry of the full human being, going along in his life and telling you about what he sees, hears, finds, thinks, feels... no one does it better.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koch is (or was, I never know how to refer to deceased authors, but I naturally view authors as always existing, and so always in the present tense) one of the most entertaining poets, but boy can he get cloying! Maybe the book's just too thick! Maybe Koch was just too facile!

He's also one of the funniest phrase artists around, especially in his earlier books, and sometimes master of the exclamation point(!).

[Tia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan, read his plays as well. "The Gold Standard" is a great, kooky and strangely moving collection, though I could say that about his poems as well. I was once in a production of his one-act, "Edward & Christine," in which I played a rabbit, a statue, a nymph, a temple column, and an elephant. And that's not even all of it. AWESOME.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever I think about Kenneth Koch, the poems that immediately come to mind are "The Pleasures of Peace" and "One Train May Hide Another." This collection is rich with so much more and really does something that I think is rare in poetry--it celebrates pleasure. It is also a HUGE book--one that is fun to return to, flip open at random, and enjoy.

[Rupert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot to digest, but brilliant lines everywhere! Not so crazy about his "plays", but his images leap off the page and work like drugs.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

He's the poetry man. Look especially at his short poems on aesthetics.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

People are surprised to find that he's my least favorite NYS poet, but that's like picking a least favorite child. Or something.

[Glenn]

Weird long and somewhat prosey poems. Some I loved. Others I couldn't even finish. Interesting is a good sum up.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Kenneth Koch, so for all of his poems to be together in one book is a joy...

This one is staying in the stack on my desk...

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

He wasn't the best poet or anything but we could've hung out.

[Ofelia Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kenneth Koch is the Kurt Vonnegut of poetry.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Godfather of "Ultra-Talk" poetry.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am really really diggin Kenneth Koch. Didn't hit me before. Now in my late 30's it is connecting!!!

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenthesis is one of the best poems ever

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just. Read. Him.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Some General Instructions" and "Art of Poetry" from *Art of Love*---brilliant

[Jocelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

As Koch would say himself, “the world never tires of bad poetry, and for this reason we have come to this garden, which is another world.”

By all accounts I should of loved everything Koch wrote. He writes of New York, recognizing what I know all too well. He employs references that display his intellect, showcasing what a brilliant man he was. I can go on by the use of form and technique, but I will spare you the details.

Yet, I found myself skipping most of. Perhaps, when I come back to it, I will find a new appreciation. But for every poem that I found enjoyable, I had to skip three pages.

It read to me more like a journal than a completed published poetry. If you love this of style I would recommend Koch. I can feel him coming home and writhing all that had happened through the words. The excitement with newfound obsession that engrosses all of your poetry.

Like a journal there is a lot of fluffy and repetition. It is not always that particular bad, but a first draft. Other times it was a concept that was not well executed. Or just bad.

Though, I admire Koch’s attempts. He is quirky and not afraid of it. He is self aware which made his poetry much more bearable (this is a compliment). If a poem was bad, I can still pick out a line that made the reading experience worth it.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

One must really adore a poet to slog through a 750 page collection, and I have found that I do not love Kenneth Koch, though I feel great gratitude towards him for his work in working with poetry with children. I would have preferred a 100 or fewer page selected--all that I could bear.

[David Linwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deft, masterful. I both regret not getting to this collection earlier, and not taking more time to truly savour it on my first read.

[Juuso]

joka ikinen luettu ja ulkoa opeteltu

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kenneth Koch is a major American poet, and one of the major poets from the New York School in the twentieth century. His poems cover love and a delight in the present and aesthetic. He also essentially breaks all rules. The masterpiece in this collection, in my opinion, is “The Art of Poetry” -- a magnificent tour de force of Koch’s theories. He is unflinching in his criticisms of Blake, Wordsworth, Whitman, and others. Particularly interesting to me is his criticism of exigent poets, or those who writes poems as conclusions.

At times, these poems are difficult to read. The fire scattershot in all directions, and sometimes back on themselves. A great example is “West Wind”
It’s the ocean of western steel
Bugles that makes me want to listen
To the parting of the trees
Like intemperate smiles, in a
Storm coat evangelistically ground
Out of spun glass and silver threads
When stars are in my head, and we
Are apart and together, friend of my youth
Whom I’ve so recently met—a fragment of the universe
In our coats, a believable doubling
Of the fresh currents of doubt and
Thought! a winter climate
Found in the Southern Hemisphere and where
I am who offers you to wear,
And in this storm, along the tooth of the street,
The intemperate climate of this double frame of the universe. (173)

What Koch means at the end of “The Man” I have absolutely no clue:
KNEE

With fennel pals the ranch.
The best nights in Arabia. Cotton punches. Rearward actions.
Possibilities will not grumble toward the cheated giraffe
Quietly bursting the cactus with tweezers of cherries,
Just as I cannot remember my norm.
Was bent like this? And is unlike this? Cardboards
Jinglebells and playing cards,
Showing bleachers in light glass. (64)

In other moments, however, Koch is absolutely brilliant. I love the line from “Limits” - “The uniform of the gladdest malt is its sureness.” (36) The end of “Hearing” is stunningly beautiful and spiritual:
A basso sings, and a soprano answers him.
Then there is thunder in a clear blue sky,
And, from the earth, a sigh: “This song is finished.” (182)

At times the poems are both maddeningly confusing and playfully fun, such as “Equal to You”
Can you imagine the body being
The really body the being the reality
Body being the body if reality
Is what it is it is, not that reality
Doesn’t infer the body, still
The body being the bearer of reality
And the barer of the body
The body being reality
That is reality’s reality
Hardly on earth ever seen
But from it we have the word connubial
Which means
The body bearing the body in reality
And reality being the body
And body-reality being borne.
I am bearing a burden
Which reminded me of you
Bearing away the swell
Of the sea
But can you imagine the body bearing reality
And being reality
That’s where we get the
Word connubial which is a word for the body’s being
Being in reality and being a body
In reality and bearing the burden
Of the body in reality, by being real
And by being the body of the real. (220)

My favorite lines, however, come from “On Aesthetics”:
AESTHETICS OF AVANT-GARDE THEATRE

Make the stage an actor
Make an actor the stage.

…

AESTHETICS OF OPERA

Don’t sing an aria
To someone who can’t
Sing one back.

…

AESTHETICS OF INTEGRITY

For every star in the sky
Someone is holding his ground.

…

AESTHETICS OF COMEDY ASLEEP

Don’t wake the clown
Or he may knock you down.

…

AESTHETICS OF THE AESTHETICIAN

What is the aesthetician
But a mule hitched to the times?

Perhaps a great summing up is the quote from Nietzsche on the cover page to “Songs from the Plays”:
Around the hero, everything becomes a tragedy.
Around God, everything becomes what? a world?
There is something sad about these poems. Something questioning. Something heroic. Something…puzzling.

See my other reviews here!