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Sun Out: Selected Poems 1952-1954
Mr. Koch’s poems have a natural voice, they are quick, alert, instinctive . . . He has vivacity and go, originality of perception and intoxication with life. Most important of all, he is not dull.” --Frank O’Hara, Poetry , 1955
Gathered together for the first time, the exciting, startling early work of one of our finest poets. Writing as a young man in the 1950s, Koch, a member of the now famed New York School along with John Ashbery, Larry Rivers, Frank O’Hara, and others, experimented with the delicate balance between sound and sense to offer a series of poems resembling music or abstract painting. For example, he opens the title poem “Bananas, piers, limericks / I am postures / Over there, I, are / The lakes of delectation / Sea, sea you!”
Also included are a selection of short plays in verse and Koch’s innovative masterpiece, “When the Sun Tries to Go On,” a poem that “produces a radical reworking of the life-poem myth predominant in American poetics since ‘Song of Myself’” (William Watkins, In the Process of Poetry).
About “When the Sun Tries to Go On,” David Lehman wrote, “Koch takes a great deal of delight in the sounds of words and his consciousness of them; he splashes them like paint on a page with enthusiastic puns, internal rhymes, titles of books, names of friends, and seems surprised as we are at the often witty outcome” (Poetry, 1968).
When the poems in Sun Out were originally published, they set a standard for the freshness and surprise of language used in extraordinary ways. For almost five decades they have delighted readers lucky enough to find them. It is our pleasure to make them once again available in this new and provocative collection.
Gathered together for the first time, the exciting, startling early work of one of our finest poets. Writing as a young man in the 1950s, Koch, a member of the now famed New York School along with John Ashbery, Larry Rivers, Frank O’Hara, and others, experimented with the delicate balance between sound and sense to offer a series of poems resembling music or abstract painting. For example, he opens the title poem “Bananas, piers, limericks / I am postures / Over there, I, are / The lakes of delectation / Sea, sea you!”
Also included are a selection of short plays in verse and Koch’s innovative masterpiece, “When the Sun Tries to Go On,” a poem that “produces a radical reworking of the life-poem myth predominant in American poetics since ‘Song of Myself’” (William Watkins, In the Process of Poetry).
About “When the Sun Tries to Go On,” David Lehman wrote, “Koch takes a great deal of delight in the sounds of words and his consciousness of them; he splashes them like paint on a page with enthusiastic puns, internal rhymes, titles of books, names of friends, and seems surprised as we are at the often witty outcome” (Poetry, 1968).
When the poems in Sun Out were originally published, they set a standard for the freshness and surprise of language used in extraordinary ways. For almost five decades they have delighted readers lucky enough to find them. It is our pleasure to make them once again available in this new and provocative collection.
- GenresPoetry
160 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2002
4 people are currently reading
19 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 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 19, 2023
Brave for its outright obtuse nature.
Nearly unreadable for its outright obtuse nature.
Sometimes words betray. Sometimes words make no sense at all.
Nearly unreadable for its outright obtuse nature.
Sometimes words betray. Sometimes words make no sense at all.
January 27, 2022
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.
* * *
There are ban-dares of "lame" low
Beside "tree" entrance. Hint. Barricades
He ogle. Are the bleeding lifesavers?
Rent hippopotamus! Ave.
Talked savage. In
Says on emp. out
Care, as! bed; free auto tires
Coat, on'd am, O box "e'en" blouse.
* * *
Roof in me, tone-deaf flail!
Clubfoot, mirror, cacophony!
Orchestra of picture-mail
Seed catalogue of yellow finch-valentines,
Drive mirth to sleep! "Next time."
Four-eyes, November talk-boat!
Swift memory shale questioning
Steep Andes cough tic mentioning
Sabotage quiet pensioning skeet
Buffalo quack nimrod shoots vest key.
O nameplates, foreign till-bow!
Numbers of Crimean Sung
French dog shows' climate speak quietude
Froth Medici Ghent horses, O pock!
Sail me from cart, hooky, and sail!
* * *
Opponent disarm firearm
A halo of flowers
Sean London
An apple of early floors
To cope with
Our poor bridge of an
Army of hated flowers,
So goodbye to this environment!
I wish to remember
Their falling fur coats
Whose hair was "too anguished
To limit" the crime wave
Of teased bodies
My loss helps you
Into a hen
And the cheer confabulates once more.
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.
* * *
There are ban-dares of "lame" low
Beside "tree" entrance. Hint. Barricades
He ogle. Are the bleeding lifesavers?
Rent hippopotamus! Ave.
Talked savage. In
Says on emp. out
Care, as! bed; free auto tires
Coat, on'd am, O box "e'en" blouse.
- Gypsy Yo-yo, pg. 30
* * *
Roof in me, tone-deaf flail!
Clubfoot, mirror, cacophony!
Orchestra of picture-mail
Seed catalogue of yellow finch-valentines,
Drive mirth to sleep! "Next time."
Four-eyes, November talk-boat!
Swift memory shale questioning
Steep Andes cough tic mentioning
Sabotage quiet pensioning skeet
Buffalo quack nimrod shoots vest key.
O nameplates, foreign till-bow!
Numbers of Crimean Sung
French dog shows' climate speak quietude
Froth Medici Ghent horses, O pock!
Sail me from cart, hooky, and sail!
- Poem, pg. 39
* * *
Opponent disarm firearm
A halo of flowers
Sean London
An apple of early floors
To cope with
Our poor bridge of an
Army of hated flowers,
So goodbye to this environment!
I wish to remember
Their falling fur coats
Whose hair was "too anguished
To limit" the crime wave
Of teased bodies
My loss helps you
Into a hen
And the cheer confabulates once more.
- Sunshine on January 15, pg. 40
December 29, 2021
There were some great lines/word play, but it was otherwise incomprehensible and not in a fun way. I love Koch's other work and am excited to make my way through the rest of his collected poems in chronological order.
May 17, 2011
Sun Out: Selected Poems 1952-1954
Being a fan of Koch's later work (esp. New Addresses, which I will review shortly), I bought a few of his others, sight unseen, figuring I'd like them, too. This is a selection of his earliest work, written when he was in his late 20s. Very modernist and abstract, full of language that feels thrown together, and with no narrative or story-like elements that I could discern, this is the sort of poetry I generally cannot stand. But I forced my way through this book, looking for something to identify with and like.
You can hear and see the influence of Koch's friend John Ashbery here, but unlike Ashbery, whose work to me feels like he leaves emotional and visual "clues" to shape his poems, these pieces felt like they had no footholds whatsoever.
I managed to find ONE line of poetry I liked, the last line of a "play"/poem titled Pericles:
"The organ's orgasm and the aspirin tablet's speechless spasm."
I love the sound here and the implications. But a whole book of free associative poetry that toys with language was just too much for me. I really tried to find other parts here to like and enjoy; I do like to read poetry that plays with language and tosses it around a bit, not all poetry has to "make sense" to me to appeal (see, again, Ashbery), or "mean something" -- a poem can just be, in the words of MacLeish). Normally, I love Koch's humor and silliness/playfulness. It's on display here, but I found no emotional or intellectual entry... I just felt lost.
Here's the beginning of the long (69 page) poem that ends the book, which Koch wrote in 3 months, "When the Sun Tries to Go On":
"And, with a shout, collecting coat hangers
Dour rebus, conch, hip,
Ham, the autumn day, oh how genuine!
Literary frog, catch-all boxer, O
Real! The magistrate, say "group", bower, undies
Disk, poop, Timon of Athens. When
The bugle shimmies, how glove towns!
It's Merrimac, bends, and pure gymnasium
Impy keels! The earth desks, madmen
Impose a shy (oops) broken tube's child --
Land! why are your bandleaders troops
Of is? Honk, can the mailed rose
Gesticulate? Arm the paper arm!...."
If this sort of thing delights you, you'll love this book. It defies categorization, very modern and illustrative of work produced then as now.... but I just have never developed a taste for it.
Being a fan of Koch's later work (esp. New Addresses, which I will review shortly), I bought a few of his others, sight unseen, figuring I'd like them, too. This is a selection of his earliest work, written when he was in his late 20s. Very modernist and abstract, full of language that feels thrown together, and with no narrative or story-like elements that I could discern, this is the sort of poetry I generally cannot stand. But I forced my way through this book, looking for something to identify with and like.
You can hear and see the influence of Koch's friend John Ashbery here, but unlike Ashbery, whose work to me feels like he leaves emotional and visual "clues" to shape his poems, these pieces felt like they had no footholds whatsoever.
I managed to find ONE line of poetry I liked, the last line of a "play"/poem titled Pericles:
"The organ's orgasm and the aspirin tablet's speechless spasm."
I love the sound here and the implications. But a whole book of free associative poetry that toys with language was just too much for me. I really tried to find other parts here to like and enjoy; I do like to read poetry that plays with language and tosses it around a bit, not all poetry has to "make sense" to me to appeal (see, again, Ashbery), or "mean something" -- a poem can just be, in the words of MacLeish). Normally, I love Koch's humor and silliness/playfulness. It's on display here, but I found no emotional or intellectual entry... I just felt lost.
Here's the beginning of the long (69 page) poem that ends the book, which Koch wrote in 3 months, "When the Sun Tries to Go On":
"And, with a shout, collecting coat hangers
Dour rebus, conch, hip,
Ham, the autumn day, oh how genuine!
Literary frog, catch-all boxer, O
Real! The magistrate, say "group", bower, undies
Disk, poop, Timon of Athens. When
The bugle shimmies, how glove towns!
It's Merrimac, bends, and pure gymnasium
Impy keels! The earth desks, madmen
Impose a shy (oops) broken tube's child --
Land! why are your bandleaders troops
Of is? Honk, can the mailed rose
Gesticulate? Arm the paper arm!...."
If this sort of thing delights you, you'll love this book. It defies categorization, very modern and illustrative of work produced then as now.... but I just have never developed a taste for it.
August 13, 2011
(Throat clearing) "Gorillas arch coming."
July 8, 2010
I gave up after the first few poems. Sorry, Danny.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews