Kenneth Koch Books

I first picked up this book in a bargain bin....I must admit I only liked the cover, that's why I bought it! Later, when I decided to read some of the content, I was dumbfounded! This is a collection of off-the-wall "plays" that can be compared to nothing I've ever read....plays whose main characters are punctuation, or Shakespearean, or from nursery rhymes, and greek myth. This is both a very light and very heavy read, all at the same time...a nice brain tweak!

One of the so-called New York poets (Ashbury, O'Hara, Schuyler), and (I think) the best. There are subsequent poetry books by Koch, and there is now the collected Koch too, but he wrote a lot, and this is a good starter. The subject matter is wide, the viewpoints quirky, sometimes almost surrealistic, and highly imaginative. Often there is some area of English or European poetry which - if you recognise it - adds another dimension to the delights of the surface. If you like this, go also for New Addresses or Possible Worlds. The long poems (Epic sized) are also immense fun (Duplications; Ko). Koch is a virtuoso poet: metrical skill, flamboyant use of traditional rhyme schemes, but he could also do free verse too ...

This book combines largely unpublished short poems of the early 1950s with the mock-epic "When the sun tries to go on," published in the late 1960s but pretty much unavailable now. This early Koch is particularly refreshing. Koch died in July of 2002 and has published many volumes of poetry, and this work brings us back to his literary origins.

This is an excellent book for beginning readers and writers of poetry. Koch introduces the reader to poetry as an art form that can be accessible if one does not make it too hard; he makes poetry less intimidating, more comfortable. He tries to explain how we can understand it without feeling stupid. Then, he groups poems by poet so that the reader can get to know each poet's style. Finally, each section is followed by an exercise directing the reader to write in a given poet's style. I have found the exercises thought provoking; they have broadened my own writing. My only criticism is that most of the great poets represented are men. The same could certainly be done and very successfully with more women poets, especially the confessional poets such as Plath. Overall, a great book for teachers, for writers, and for those who would like to know more about poetry but who need some convincing.

Am daunted, in the task of writing a review, by the fact that the previous reviewers all got it exactly right! The late Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), whimsical poet, teacher, and enthusiast for the evangel of poetry here gives us a book ideally suited for any poet or reader from high-schooler to nonagenarian.

The first 135 pages of the book are something of an instruction manual, or an explanation of why poetry seems so strange at first. He patiently explains the obvious : sound matters as much as sense; words have musical value; there is a "poetry language" -- or perhaps several poetry languages? -- that we discover through reading anything & everything in sight. He comes up with the happy comparison of poetry as language being put through a synthesizer!

He speaks of the need to build up a "poetry base" through much exposure to the poems of the past and present; he "opens up" the Wallace Stevens poem "Anecdote of the Jar" and makes enchanting a poem that irritated me on previous readings; he makes apposite remarks on revision and inspiration ...

The latter half of the book is a neat -- but not quite comprehensive, as Koch himself admits -- anthology of poetry from across the globe, & encompassing three millennia. From Li Po (Li Bai) to Lorca, from Sappho to Snyder, from Ovid to O'Hara. Senghor and Cesaire are alongside Ashbery and Wallace Stevens. Marvell and Shakespeare, Whitman and Hopkins and several in between, before and after. Most of the poems are suffixed by a comment by Koch of less than a page (except for Keats's "Bright Star" which he allows to shine by itself!). Especially good, I thought, his brief note on the sonnet by George Herbert, "Prayer," which I have been trying of late to memorize.

Excellent reading for the train, the waiting room, the bed, or whatever region of the house you call your workshop or study!!

This poem brings a sophisticated contemporary sensibility to poetry in a wholly non-threatening way. Koch writes in a way a child could understand, yet his choice of poetic texts is refreshing. None of the standard Sandburg and Frost stuff that turns intelligent children (and adults) off from poetry.

There are some great comments about little-known poets like Joseph Ceravolo.

A superb introduction to the world of poetry. For my money, it does the best job of describing exactly what poetry is and how it's different from other forms of writing. Poetry is a language within a language and the essential element of this language is music. Meter and rhyme, similies and metaphors, these and other tools available to a poet are all about creating music and music is what makes a poem sing. All writing advice boils down to read a lot and write a lot. This book makes both tasks easier.

This is excellent for beginning readers and writers of poetry. In the essays at the beginning, Koch is successful at convincing the reader that poetry is not as hard as we make it out to be. If we relax and don't allow ourselves to be intimidated, we can enjoy poetry. The rest of the book is devoted to groups of poems, each by one poet, thereby allowing the reader to get to know writers' styles. At the end of each section is a poetry writing exercise asking the reader to write a poem in the style they have just read. These are excellent exercises for broadening anyone's writing; they have certainly broadend my own writing. The only criticism that I have of the book is that the poets included are mostly men. I would think that it could have been more inclusive of women, especially the confessional poets such as Plath whose style new poets may grasp. Overall, this is a great book for teachers, writers, and readers.

Excellent book. Arrived promptly. I would have liked to see a more modern selection of poets - ah well.

Fun tour through the ins and outs of poetry from Whitman to Koch. A bit reductionist, but a great way to read the greatest hits of a handful of greatest poets and fill up a notebook of your own. Great for the classroom too.

Having taught creative writing at the high-school level for almost ten years, I have been acquainted with a multitude of writing textbooks. SLEEPING ON THE WING is the only one which has worked as a whole. In my new course for 2001 entitled simply POETRY, I have used each and every poem collected and exercise designed here by Koch. They work. They're intelligent, focused, and student friendly. This selection of poetry from the modern canon is both challenging and accessible.

Best of all, this anthology is downright fun. Koch's glosses are straightforward and informative, and his exercises doubtlessly grow out of his own lifetime of experience with writing poetry. Since I write along with my classes, I, too, have been wildly pleased with my own poetry production using Koch's exercises.

This is a fine text for the autodidact who wishes to teach her- or himself how to write a poem. However, the energy and zest which flows from a larger group of young poets working together is invaluable as inspiration.

Mr. Koch, you are not simply a stuffy tweed from Columbialand. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and grace.

A wonderful anthology with short, lively pieces chosen especially for young people in high school, but the selection of poems may well delight readers of all ages -- not only beginners! Among the poets represented are not only predictable classics -- Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot -- but also such contemporaries as the post-moderns John Ashbery and Amiri Baraka. The selection of 23 poets -- American, British, European -- has a somewhat urban, playful quality reminiscent of the sixties: Koch is definitely New York School. New York City style or not, though, my colleagues and students upstate have found much here to intrigue them. The editorial comments and creative writing suggestions are especially valuable to teachers who want to make poetry come alive in the classroom. It's also worth noting that the book is well-designed: the poems look good on the page -- they invite the kind of reading and creative response they embody. From the very first poem we read together -- "Disillusionment at Ten O'clock" by Wallace Stevens (beginning "The houses are haunted / By white night-gowns" and ending with "an old sailor" who "Drunk and asleep in his boots / Catches tigers / In red weather") the class was wide awake.

We used "Sleeping on the Wing" in our Senior Citizen poetry study group. It was clear and understandable to persons who had little or no background in poetry (many thought "if it didn't rhyme it wasn't poetry") We also had persons who had studied poetry before - even an English teacher - who found it instructive. It was a wonderful book for our diverse group.

We especially liked the selection of poets, some all of us had heard about before - Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats - and others most of us were unfamiliar with - Rainer Maria Rilke, Guillaume Apollinaire, Federico Garcia Lorca. The editors describe each author's poetry in such an exciting way we were drawn into the emotions of the words, the sounds, the images, without feeling our study was too technical. Each week we eagerly looked forward to the next poet. It was like opening doors for us - twenty three doors!

Our group is not a writing group but a few people did write poems following the suggestions of the editors. We were all delighted with the results, including the authors. The rest of us are now thinking we will try too sometime!!

This book has some nice ideas for getting children thinking about poetry and some techniques for developing the writing process. Good for teachers who are worried about teaching poetry; it has a lot of examples of student poetry. The text could be improved with more recent student poems (many reference pop culture of the 70s) and more writing techniques from an up-to-date educational perspective.

Some 35+ years after its initial publication, this remains one of the finest books about writing poetry -- and not just for children, either! Kenneth Koch walks a delicate & difficult line here, trusting in the experiences & imaginations of children, yet also emphasizing (in an unforced but gently firm manner) the need for work & craft. Most of all, it demystifies poetry without stripping it of its wonder & magic, making it accessible to all who are willing to meet it halfway. There's never a note of condescension here, just a genuine love of poetry & the expectation that any aspiring poet will give his or her all in creating poems. Most highly recommended!

April is National Poetry Month. Here's a book that will bring the joy of poetry to your classroom. The title exercises are especially effective. The kids in our library loved to list lies! It sounds so simple. Try it--it's pure magic.

This is one book I can't do without. I was introduced to Kenneth Koch's work when I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison taking a workshop from an author who had taught with Koch. It has been my "writing Bible" ever since. I have used almost every exercise at one time or another with elementary school children, with fantastic results. Along with Koch's "Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?", this is a classic.

I was first introduced to this marvelous book as a sophomore in an advanced placement English and History class in high school. An older graduate of the program had gone on to study poetry under Kenneth Koch at Columbia University, and returned to share what he had learned.

Now, with Bachelor's Degrees in both English and Elementary Education and a Master's in Language, Linguistics and Culture, I still consider WISHES, LIES, AND DREAMS to be the single best book on teaching writing that I have ever read.

Koch does not waste time with "assessment" of students' skills, collecting data, or any of the other peripheral matters that clutter most writing "methods" texts. This book is about WRITING, about inspiring students to write, about focusing the talents students already have but might not know that they possess.

I first used this book as a teacher when I was student teaching with a class of recalcitrant fifth graders who had been taught strictly by the text throughout their elementary school years. They almost unanimously declared that they hated writing. Employing Koch's ideas and combining them with the District-required skills lessons, I successfully taught these students what they needed to know - and they loved it!

After I began teaching in my own classroom, I used WLD with my students in bilingual third grade classes. Again, we were successful, even with second-language learners. Years later, when I began teaching second grade, and last year, when I worked with first graders, this book was an essential part of our writing program.

Having been an elementary school teacher now for eleven years, I have come to the conclusion that the best teachers begin with the students' interests and talents, then direct this energy toward teaching the students what they don't know.

Even though the subtitle is "Teaching Children to Write Poetry", the ideas Koch presents serve as a starting point for introducing children to other forms of writing. While the book is directed primarily toward elementary school students, I cannot imagine that high schoolers and even college students could not benefit from it.

Best of all, Koch himself takes up little space explaining to us, telling us how to teach, or - as so many methodology text writers tend to do - ramble on for page after page stating the obvious. Most of the book is filled with examples of writing from the STUDENTS Koch worked with in the New York City Public Schools. These brief poems provide students with a concrete example of what children before them have written, and inspire them to write their own poetry.

The Six-Traits writing process hadn't even been invented (or at least hadn't been named that) when this book was published over thirty years ago, but I found it easy to find examples of good use of Voice, Word Choice, Conventions, Ideas, and Sentence Fluency throughout the book.

No matter what program your school district requires, WLD will help provide inspiration. Teachers can easily supplement skills and grammar lessons in addition to Koch's marvelous ideas, and will probably think of millions more.

If you're not a teacher, sit down with your children and read this book together, read the children's poems, and try some of the ideas. You'll probably end up recommending WLD to your child's teacher - and he'll be glad you did.

I first discovered Kenneth Koch in a Boston bookshop, looking through volumes of poetry while waiting for a friend. I read a few excerpts from "The Collected Poems" ('Talking to Patrizia' and 'To Marina' were the first two I read). Later on, I invested in my own copy. Recently, I took the Art of Love out of a local library and read it, not necessarily in the correct order, in one or two sittings. The poems found within this collection, besides "The Circus" are over-the-top, at points laugh-out-loud manuals on how to appreciate beauty, read and write poetry and how to truly love a woman (by tying her arms behind her back to make her breasts look pretty!). Most of the poems in this book are lengthy but they are quick and enjoyable reads just the same because of Koch's funloving, optimistic voice. If you find the time, this is an absolutely a worthwhile read.

This is a book of poetry quite unlike anything available these days. Drawing from a vast range of history, locations and experiences (both literary and physical) Kenneth Koch achieves a brilliant and thorough description of love that remains timeless

As I see that there has been only one review of this book, I feel compelled to add another voice. I will be brief: reading any of Kenneth Koch's extended poems requires patience, humor, and a willingness to suspend judgement until all the stanzas have been read, and read again, since Koch often purposefully allows the casual reader to be misled. Koch often seems to be deliberately offensive in his poems (the first sections of "The Art of Love" is one example), though it is through this device t he culls the serious reader from those who might get the over-arching compassion and wonder that is present in all of Kenneth Koch's work.

P.S. -- Kenneth Koch passed away earlier this month; an interview with him is preserved in the National Public Radio Archive.

Although the book was somewhat worn, it holds together well - physically as a book, metaphorically as a collection of thoughtful and insightful words.

It's hard to believe there has only been one other review of this book, which has been out for months now. Granted it is a collection of works that (may) have already been published. And it is awfully big, especially in an already overcrowded apartment. But still, this is a work of great magnitude and an extraordinary collection by this extraordinary poet. Some of his poems are so immediate, I feel I can hear his voice as he is spontaneously creating them. And yet, only someone with great skill and insight can make poetry seem so effortless and free wheeling. If I were king, and I am still hoping, I would decree a copy of this collection in every house in the realm. That's how good it is.

Something inside me resists calling Kenneth Koch my favorite poet. His poems are too conversational, too easy-going, too entertaining to be so important. Except the one that made me break out in laughter while I was reading it on a treadmill at Bally's. And the one that made me cry (on that same treadmill, damn it!) And the one that scared me--really scared me--because simply, lightly, even jokingly, it presented a truth I absolutely did not want to hear. . .Now that I think of it, I realize that without any special effort on my part, I formed the kind of relationship with Koch that folks back in the old country had with Yevtushenko, Bloch or Pushkin. (Without any effort on my part, I say--all the effort was Koch's.) Koch is dead now, of course. But open the pages of this book, and he'll become a part of your life as well--as a friend, a teacher, a soulmate.

If you are like many Americans, many of the concepts and processes surrounding investing are a mystery. This book makes it very clear what investing is, spells out the risks as well as rewards, and identifies strategies for successful management of a personal strategy. While the explanations are simple, they are not condescending.

The book helped me change my perceptions of money and financial security. How? It pointed out fallacies I had about mundane matters such as spending habits. Further, there are tips and suggestions for defining and achiveing personal goals.

Most Americans can relate to one or several of the following concerns: the acquisition, lack, loss or continued possession of financial security. Simply, the CIG to Savvy Investing has altered my perception of financial well-being as it relates to my life.

I am the son of a financial consultant. I grew up being beaten about the head with money management techniques, to the point I became deaf. A friend suggested that I try out Savvy Investing in order to 'get out' of the rut in which I felt I trapped. I purchased this book in early fall of 2003 and quickly began changing negative spending and re-crafting saving habits because Ed Koch and Debra DeSalvo do such a wonderful job of describing financial pitfalls and solutions to everyday problems.

The book helped me change my perceptions of money and financial security. It helped me uncover what I refused to see in my spending habits. It helped me focus my efforts and get serious about saving by providing helpful hints and easily attainable personal goals.

The simple explanations, of what I previously considered complex financial options, allowed me to 'see' a way out and to plan an attack for getting ahead. In October of 2003, I was sure that I was two years away from purchasing a house. Last week, I put money down on a new home. This book helped me see that I was in a far better position than I believed myself to be, and it opened my eyes to financial opportunities around me.

I highly recommend this book for parents to send with their children off to college. I wish I knew going into college what this book taught me over the last few months. I also suggest the book to anyone that feels stuck or burdened by money. Tax time is a great time to read Savvy Investing, because you will quickly understand the benefits of changing your habits. The book will point out tax pitfalls and suggest ways to improve your utilization of YOUR money that you might be throwing away to the Feds. The tips and warnings are invaluable and the suggestions can quickly teach you how to subtly change your spending habits, without infringing on your perceived happiness, while creating future wealth and financial stability.

This book is a great place for the beginning investor. In fact, it oughta be required reading for anyone about to get married. It gives the basics on everything from retirements accounts (of all types) to buying a home, to creating your own financial plan, even advice on divorce. Just about any basic information on finances that a person would need can be found here. Someone looking for something a little deeper might do well to skim the book to glean usable info and then to find something a little more specific.

As a side note, if you've read this title, skip reading "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Investing Like a Pro," as these two books are essentially the same.

It's a tragedy of Rousselian proportions that this is the only easily-acquired text of the Master in print... Roussel was, after all, the subject of Michel Foucault's very first (& to me his only readable!) book DEATH & THE LABYRINTH (a perfect companion to this collection/introduction). The present volume is essential to complete one's appreciation of the 'novels' LOCUS SOLUS & IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA, should they drop into your lucky lap...you see, I too find myself thoroughly intrigued/mesmerized/in awe of the strange achievement of this genius-nut, inspirer as well of Breton, Cocteau, Dali, Leiris, Duchamp especially, Robbe-Grillet coitainly, Perec indubitably; but these dudes don't hold a candle to the lucid lunacy, fertile-beyond-belief imagination, and quaint language perfectly suited to express the convoluted twisted-mythic enigmatic obsessions of RR... who felt the Star on his forehead while but a teen, which Star had begun to glow on high when he was found...

Raymond Roussel was an eccentric French writer who was born in 1877 and apparently committed suicide in 1933. His best known works of those translated into English are his novels Locus Solus and Impressions of Africa. Roussel wrote novels, tried to adapt them to the stage, and then tried to write a play for the stage. The audience responded to the play by throwing things and yelling at each other. Roussel, who never experienced anything like widespread acclaim, has nonetheless influenced French literature. Eventually, he was to gain the support of the surrealists. Decades after his death, he is remembered fondly by the OuLiPo - a group of Paris-based writers devoted to exploring new experimental literary forms. Two American poets - John Ashbery and Harry Mathews (also a member of the OuLiPo) - hold him in high esteem and here the two of them offer new translations of some of Roussel's works. How I Wrote Certain of my Books is the title of this collection and also the title of an essay by Roussel to explain how he wrote the two novels I mentioned. The rest of the collection includes an excellent introduction and biography of Roussel by John Ashbery, the first chapter of each of the two novels, the fifth act of one of Roussel's plays, the third canto of his poem "New Impressions of Africa," and the notes to serve as an outline for another novel Roussel apparently never wrote. Roussel's novels are among what I consider the great untranslatable works of the twentieth century. Much of the imagery and plot detail are bizarre flowerings of imaginative detail rooted in French puns. When this is translated, one gets only the strange details, but none of the phonetic basis underlying them. Like a joke that isn't funny, or a sonnet which has been paraphrased so that it no longer rhymes. The canto of the poem "New Impressions of Africa" was my favorite part of the collection. I've never read a poem with nested parentheses and lengthy footnotes before. The translation preserves aspects of the rhyme and meter, even throughout the footnotes. Although this volume doesn't contain the entire poem, it does contain all of the 59 drawings that originally accompanied it. But these drawings are not only not by Roussel, they aren't even interesting. In an introduction, which explains how Roussel had sent 59 captions to a hack artist to make mundane sketches to compliment his bizarre poem, Salvador Dali is quoted as saying that, seen in the context of the poem, the drawings "shed their banality and become metaphysical." Fine, but here the drawings are not only not shown in the context of the poem, the entire poem isn't even presented. I can save you some time by telling you right now that the drawings numbered 40-48 accompany the poem on pages 97-103. Read How I Wrote Certain of my Books as an introduction to one of France's literary madmen, and for an exceedingly clear description of how Raymond Roussel wrote certain of his books. To anyone who is curious for a taste, but not a full course, of Roussel's writing, this volume will serve well. Should you be utterly taken by the writing, however, you may be dismayed that few of the works are represented in their entirety. You will never get to find out how the novels end or how the play begins. At its best, How I Wrote Certain of My Books will send to your library looking for more.

5 stars, but only as a companion piece or annotated SAMPLE-PLATE since that's what it is. Find Cunningham's translation of Locus Solus (very hard to find, even at big libraries) and read that first. Personally I would have paid the $15 entry price for "How I Wrote Certain of My Books" even if the only thing contained in it was the "Documents To Serve As An Outline."

A lot of the publicity material surrounding Roussel's work is misleading, in that it makes his style sound radical or experimental (or "distorted" or "enigmatic"-- see the professional review quoted by Amazon). Years ago when I first read Roussel, he surpassed my wildest hopes and had none of the pitfalls or turn-offs that I expected from all the publicity I'd read.

The under-rated and over-looked part of Roussel, yet the part that unfolds off the very pages to fill up your bedroom and neighborhood, is the sheer genius of story-telling. You'll happily find that genius here in "Documents To Serve as an Outline" (a posthumously published work, contained in the current volume), but it's also on good display in the separate and hard-to-find novel Locus Solus that appears as an excerpt sample here. Roussel has a dazzling ability to pull endless heroes, villains, conspirators, thieves, secret-lovers, bards, misers, emperors, cultists, oracles, shamans, hermits, out of thin air and explain to you-- richly and convincingly, yet with incredible concision-- their adventures and their tribulations, and more importantly give details as to how their adventures and tribulations have repercussions across time and across the generations of his fictional worlds. The total effect is like looking at an unrolled tapestry or quilt in which you view depictions of countless essential scenes, each one involving some tremendous or trivial historical anecdote that is intricately linked to the historical scenes on the other patches.

These tales (in "Documents To Serve"; but also in Locus Solus etc) have everything that archetypically great stories have, and more: love, betrayal, tyranny, forgiveness, fantastic magnanimity, loss, disgrace, lust, executions, exonerations, vindication, solitude, comedy, crime. Most of the time at the end of a section I would sit there shaking my head back and forth, simply trying to digest what I'd just witnessed, in a kind of disbelief about how intense I found it.

Roussel's method will always hog all the attention, but it's the least striking part of his work. You can rest easy: Roussel is not a gimmick writer, and his books are not sequences of wordplay. He's been called "dream-like", but most authors described in that way usually cast a kind of haze over what they write in order to achieve such an effect. Roussel on the other hand gives you everything, and hides nothing. He is fully traditional with his voice and with his narrator's relationship with the reader: there are no narrative tricks whatsoever, no shifting viewpoints, no "blurring of the lines" between reality and dream, no nonsense.

Mark my words: a living man who had the ability to dash off characters and stories, and stories within stories, off-the-cuff, that approached what Roussel accomplishes in "Documents To Serve As An Outline" would be loved by children at family reunions, and nobody would let him alone for 2 seconds, they would want to hear more.

And throughout it all, Roussel remains one of the most concise but vivid writers I've ever read. He strives for and reaches the highest (some would say eccentrically high) standards of clarity. The efficiency and vividness of his prose has a unique power. Read it.

Roussel's fame (or notoriety) always rests on people's fascination with the mechanical/linguistic process that yielded the starting ingredients for his compositions, rather than what he achieved in terms of raw narration when he expanded upon those ingredients into book-length work. These achievements deserve independent and special recognition but have been overshadowed by the sensation of his method.

You can read for yourself Roussel's explanation of his method in this very volume--he gives an essay detailing how he came up with the ingredients for his novel Impressions of Africa. As he himself documents, the method yields only a relative handful of words and ideas that serve as ingredients and kick-starters for his imagination. The finished work of Impressions of Africa is some 300 pages long, fleshed out by conventional artistic means shared by all writers. Roussel used the linguistic/mechanical methods only as a treasure chest of ideas (especially for peculiar artifacts that appear in the plots). He did the usual craftsman's work of filling out stories with visionary narrative skill. His books are never described in this way simply because his homophone method is an easier and more sensational thing for people to talk about.

So what's the bad news about this book? WELL: The "Documents to Serve as an Outline" only adds up to about 80 pages-- Roussel died and never finished the project. Don't be scared, by the way: the so-called "outlines" are not outlines at all, and are free-standing and self-sufficient stories. Nevertheless, the title implies that they're a mere skeleton of what the man ultimately envisioned. So I suppose you'd consider that a let-down if you were a stickler.

BONUSES: "How I Wrote Certain Of My Books" also has a comprehensive (and even temperamental?) bibliography, has informative end-notes, includes a mysterious set of illustrations that Roussel himself commissioned (Salvador Dali of all people has sung lavish praises for the commission), and in all honesty the book has a beautiful blue inside-cover (paperback) the likes of which I've never seen.