The Art of Poetry

by Kenneth Koch

A charter member of the legendary New York School of poets that includes John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch has become one of America's best known and best loved poets. His apt parodies and zany poetic conceits have earned him the distinction of being the funniest poet in America, and his extravagant imagination and knack for high hilarity have pleased generations of readers.
Here, in The Art of Poetry, Koch offers...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472066056
• ISBN13: 9780472066056
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Poetics of Joy

There are those who speak of the "anxiety" of poetry, but there is a case to be made for poetry that results not from agony or a confessional impulse but out of pleasure, the desire to communicate pleasure to an audience hungry for it. Koch generates as much pleasure as any poet, and it is not only the comic value of his poetry that recommends it but the spirit of creativity itself. In "The Art of Poetry" you get a kind of guide to poetics, an "ars poetica" in the Horatian manner with an American accent. You also get "Fresh Air," his memorable 1950s diatribe against academic poetry, still pertinent today. A necessary antidote to the New York Times.