Kenneth Koch - Poetry

Poetry

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

Koch wrote of how:

The Waste Land gave the time’s most accurate data, It seemed, and Eliot was the Great Dictator Of literature. One hardly dared to wink Or fool around in any way in poems, And critics poured out awful jereboams To irony, ambiguity, and tension – And other things I do not wish to mention. (Excerpt from ‘'Seasons on Earth',’ 1987)

Though not against T. S. Eliot, Koch opposed the idea that in order to write poetry one had to be depressed or think that the world is a terrible place. His ideas were developed with close friends Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, along with painters Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers, among others. He once remarked that “Maybe you can almost characterize the poetry of the New York School as having as one of its main subjects the fullness and richness of life and the richness of possibility and excitement and happiness.” In his poem The Art of Poetry (1975) Koch offered guidelines to writing good poetry. Among his 10 suggestions are “1) Is it astonishing?” and “10) Would I be happy to go to Heaven with this pinned on to my angelic jacket as an entrance show? Oh would I?”

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

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

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

“

I don’t think the nature of my poetry is satirical or even ironic, I think its essentially lyrical...The comic element is just something that it seems to me enables me to be lyrical in the same way – not to compare myself qualitatively to these great writers – but in the same way that it enables Byron to write his best poetry and certainly Aristophanes and certain others too.

”

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

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