Sun Out Selected Poems 1952-1954

by KOCH, KENNETH

• ISBN13: 9780375709999
• ISBN10: 0375709991
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-09
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

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 with: "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 inSun Outwere 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. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

KENNETH KOCH wrote many volumes of poetry, short plays, and books about poetry. He was the winner of the Bollingen Prize, the Library of Congress Poetry Prize, and the first annual Phi Beta Kappa Award. He taught for many years at Columbia University. He died in 2002.

Table of Contents

A Note on This Book
Sun Out	p. 3
The Chase - First Day	p. 4
Highway Barns, the Children of the Road	p. 5
No Biography	p. 6
Ellie Campaigns After a Candidate's Defeat	p. 7
Rapping Along	p. 9
Poem/"Sweethearts from abroad"	p. 10
Pericles	p. 11
The Dead Body	p. 15
Asunder	p. 17
When They Packed Up, We Went	p. 19
Atlantis Was Original	p. 22
Where Am I Kenneth?	p. 23
Without Kinship	p. 25
Everyone Is Endymion	p. 28
Gypsy Yo-yo	p. 30
In the Ashes of June	p. 31
Is Nothing Reserved for Next Year, Newlyweds on Arbor Day?	p. 32
Limits	p. 34
Ohio	p. 36
No Job at Sarah Lawrence	p. 37
Poem/"Roof in me"	p. 39
Sunshine on January 15	p. 40
The Kinkaid Subway	p. 41
Guinevere or The Death of the Kangaroo	p. 42
The Cat's Breakfast	p. 51
Your Fun Is a Snob	p. 52
The Merry Stones	p. 53
The Days to Solve	p. 58
January Nineteenth	p. 60
Enl'An Trentiesme de Mon Eage	p. 62
The Man	p. 65
When the Sun Tries to Go On	p. 71
Notes	p. 141
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.