Kenneth Koch

Katz, Alex. "Portrait of a Poet: Kenneth Koch." 1970.

O what a physical effect it has on me
To dive forever into the light blue sea
Of your acquaintance!
- Kenneth Koch

Kenneth Koch was born in Cincinnati, Ohio; on February 27, 1925. After high school he enlisted into the army and became a rifleman in the Philippines. He studied at Harvard University where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree and earned a PhD at Columbia University. While working on his doctorate, Koch taught at Columbia University, Rutgers University, and Brooklyn College. He has been on the Columbia faculty since 1959, becoming a full professor in 1971. (poemhunter.com)

Kenneth Koch was a member of what was known as the New York School of Poets. The four most prominent members were Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and James Shuyler. Kenneth Koch was the only heterosexual in the group. All attended Harvard except for James Shuyler and apart from John Ashbery served in the military. Kenneth Koch was married twice during his lifetime. He met his first wife, Janice Elwood, 19, 1951. Three years later in 1954 the two married and spent some time in Italy and France. Kenneth and Janice had a daughter, Katherine, who was born in 1955. Janice Elwood died in 1981. In 1994 Koch married Karen Culler. Kenneth Koch died in 2002 from Leukemia. (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kenneth-koch)

His poetry was known as lyrical, humorous, and blunt works of literature that can convince the reader he is speaking to a subject instead of about them. The humor in his works provides an opportunity for the reader to comprehend the expression of emotion. For instance in the poem “The Bricks” , “the bricks in a wall sang this song we shall not fall the whole day long but white and small lie in abandon”, where he gave objects a voice, personality, and purpose. Koch had the ability to give raw emotion from inanimate objects. Koch tended to lead the reader into the midst of his poems where he can release various emotions such as madness, humor, and love.

In the poem “To You”, he expresses his emotions about an individual that is in love and its depth. He wrote “I love you as sheriff searches for a walnut that will solve a murder case unsolved for years”, conveying that he would do the impossible to grasp and sustain love. A walnut is so small, how is it possible to find it? Searching for a walnut to solve a murder case would seem inconceivable and ludicrous to any individual. Koch wrote, “I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields, always, to be near you, even in my heart…”, another impossible act considering the cornfields are extremely high and too crowded with growing corn. This seems to be foolish but isn’t that how human act when in love? Koch confirms that he is acting crazy by writing,”…I am crazier that shirttails….”, though the Shirttails were a downtown New York City gang who would wear their shirt outside their pants as a form a unity and method to carry and conceal multiple weapons at once. They were known to be a pretty ruthless gang. He expresses his feelings of doing the impossible just to be with his love. Koch wrote “…For this we love, and we live because we love….” which expresses the importance of love in our lives.

Koch had the ability to express his desires and comprehend what important factors are missing from daily life. In the poem Desire for Spring, he wrote, “Calcium days, days when we feed or bones! Iron days, which enrich our blood...When, will there be a perfectly ordinary spring day? For my heart needs to be fed, not my urine”, where comparison has the role of mediation between his yearning and a certain point of the year. In describing physical parts of the body which are not being sated, he is implying physical love is acceptable but emotional is needed. His usage of sarcasm portrays that an individual can state his/her feelings in poems without divulging their literal meaning. For example, he wrote, “Nothing else will satisfy me, not even in death! Not even broken life insurances policies, cancer, loss of health” the irony of this phrase is that those incidences are not satisfying but a testament to a inadequate individual.

Koch constantly describes his emotions throughout various poems that state his personal views on happiness, love, and disdain. In the poem, In Love with You, he straddles the line between sarcasm and the endearment that foreshadows his opinion. He wrote “I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love I love you daggers I love smiles daggers and symbolism.” Professing his affection for symbolism or imagery is a demonstration that being aware of your own sentiment is a profound reward. He stated, “Aren’t my eyes bigger than love?” is similar to the phrase “eyes too big for stomach”, where your eyes think and want to eat more than it can. We think Koch being humorous by expecting too much from love or that his idea of love is over the top.

Kenneth Koch’s poetry is more like Dr. Seuss and less like Edgar Allen Poe. His humor shows in all of his poems. There’s no deep or serious emotion from “To You”. His imagery transforms from serious to funny. His work is innovative compared to his fellow colleagues. For example:

           I love you as a Kid searches for a goat;
           I am crazier than shirttails
           In the wind, when you're near…

Furthermore in the poem “The Bricks” he somehow personifies objects and gives them life. The reader’s typical idea is that these bricks have no other purpose but to be built up or torn down. Koch’s viewpoint is to enjoy these bricks just as they are, not for only for their function. In the quote :

           The brick on the wall
           Sang this song
           “we shall not fall
           the whole day long
           But white and small lie in abandon.”

In this poem the two lovers, the animals and the bricks all exist in one place and time. All of these are a foundation for something. This writing is so simple and yet it is unified. The idea of any object person or animal can be appreciated with its existence. In “Yet in Desire For Spring” Koch shows his strong need for this season. Perhaps for him it’s a resource to renewing the body, and revival for the soul. Its warmth brings such joy and is needed just as much as air to breathe. Spring is a medicine, which heals and nourishes us. People usually look forward to Spring after such a harsh, brutal winter. His need for spring is essential to his spirit. Spring is not longer just a season. There’s much more behind Spring than just blooming flowers, birds chirping and rain showers and bright colors.

Here are some of the poems we decided to analyze:

- To You
- The Bricks
- Desire for Spring
- In Love with You

Here are certain recordings that can provide insight into his mind and personality:

http://www.archive.org/details/Kenneth_Koch_lecture_June_1979_79P009

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Koch.php

Food for Thought:

1. Why is comparison a constant factor in Koch’s work?
2. Should he be specified as a comical poet?
3. How do you feel about the poem To You? Does an individual succumb to wild and fanatical act while in love?
4. What do you think Koch means when he says, “Aren’t my eyes bigger than love?”
5. In comparison from Koch’s work how is his work different or similar to Frank O’Hara’s writing?

Here are a couple of poems we have discussed:


To You

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut
That will solve a murder case unsolved for years
Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window
Through which he saw her head, connecting with
Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red
Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;
For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not
Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a
Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails

In the wind, when you're near, a wind that blows from
The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;
I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields
Always, to be near you, even in my heart
When I'm awake, which swims, and also that I believe that you
Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to
The place where I think of you, a new
Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow
Of a ship which sails from Hartford to Miami, and I love you
Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun
Receives me in the questions which you always pose.


In Love with You

           1
O what a physical effect it has on me
To dive forever into the light blue sea
Of your acquaintance! Ah, but dearest friends,
Like forms, are finished, as life has ends! Still,
It is beautiful, when October
Is over, and February is over,
To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet
Ways! As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then
Reply (to no one), “Let’s go five or six blocks.”
Isn’t the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian?
Aren’t my eyes bigger than love?
Isn’t this history, and aren’t we a couple of ruins?
Is Carthage Pompeii? is the pillow the bed? is the sun
What glues our heads together? O midnight! O midnight!
Is love what we are,
Or has happiness come to me in a private car
That’s so very small I’m amazed to see it there?

           2
We walk through the park in the sun, and you say, “There’s a spider
Of shadow touching the bench, when morning’s begun.” I love you.
I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love
I love you daggers I love smiles daggers and symbolism.

           3
Inside the symposium of your sweetest look’s
Sunflower awning by the nurse-faced chrysanthemums childhood
Again represents a summer spent sticking knives into porcelain raspberries, when China’s
Still a country! Oh, King Edward abdicated years later, that’s
Exactly when. If you were seventy thousand years old, and I were a pill,
I know I could cure your headache, like playing baseball in drinking-water, as baskets
Of towels sweetly touch the bathroom floor! O benches of nothing
Appear and reappear—electricity! I’d love to be how
You are, as if
The world were new, and the selves were blue
Which we don
Until it’s dawn,
Until evening puts on
The gray hooded selves and the light brown selves of . . .
Water! your tear-colored nail polish
Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new
As a calm
On the sea, where, like pigeons,
I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated—
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!


Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!


The background information and similar ideas:
Koch, Kenneth. The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch. First Printing edition November 1, 2005.