Kenneth Koch

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Kenneth Koch (27.02) was an American poet, playwright, and scholar who was active from the 1950s to his death at the age of 77.

He was a well-known poet at the New York School of Poetry.

This was a small group of poets, including Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, who rejected modern introspective poetry in favour of an exuberant, cosmopolitan style that took inspiration from travel, painting, and music.

Life

Jay Kenneth Koch (pronounced coke) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was named after him. He began writing poetry at an early age, discovering Shelley and Keats' works in his teenage years. He served in WWII as a US Army infantryman in the Philippines at the age of 18.

He attended Harvard University, where he met John Ashbery, a future New York School poet, after his funeral. Koch earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University after graduating from Harvard in 1948 and moving to New York City.

He met his first wife, Janice Elwood, at UC Berkeley in 1951; they married in 1954 and lived in France and Italy for over a year. Katherine's daughter was born in Rome in 1955 (Mark Statman, one of Koch's former students, married Mark Statman in 1982). He joined Columbia's Department of English and Comparative Literature in 1959 and taught Columbia classes for more than 40 years.

His first wife died in 1981; Koch married Karen Culler in 1994. In 1996, he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Koch died of leukemia in 2002 after a year long fight.

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Career

Koch received the coveted Glascock Prize in 1948 while a Harvard undergraduate. In 1962, Koch was a writer on staff at Wagner College in New York City.

His poetry appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, but his poetry didn't appear in more popular magazines until the 1970s, when his book The Art of Love: Poems (1975) appeared. He continued writing poetry and publishing poetry books until his death. One Train (1994) and On The Great Atlantic Rainway: Selected Poems 1950-1988 (1994), followed closely by the Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award winner New Addresses (2000). Koch won the Bollingen Prize for One Train (1994) and On the Comeback: Selected Poems 1950-1988 (1994) and the Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award winner New Addresses (2000)

Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children To Write Poetry was Koch's first book in poetry education, published in 1970. He stayed with this book and anthologies on poetry education geared to teaching poetry appreciation and composition to children, adults, and seniors over the next 30 years.

Hundreds of avant-garde plays were written over the course of his 50 years as a performer, exemplified by drama collections such as 1000 Avant-Garde Plays (1988), with only 116 plays in total, many of which have just one scene or a few minutes in length. The Red Robins (1975), a sprawling book about a group of fighter pilots fighting for personal rights under Santa Claus's leadership, is a prime example of his prose work. Hotel Lambosa (1988), which was also based on and inspired by his world travels, was released as a collection of short stories. At least one libretto was made to music by composers, and several of his poems have been set to music by composers.

While teaching poetry at Columbia University, where his classes were extremely popular, Koch taught poetry. His frenzious humor and vivacious teaching style, often characterized by unusual physical appearance (standing on a table to shout lines by Walt Whitman) and outbursts of vocal participation often linked to Italian opera, attracted non-English majors and alumni. Making Your Own Days (1998), Stephen Coveney's final book on poetry education, Making Your Own Days (1998). Ron Padgett, David Shapiro, Frank Lima, Alan Feldman, David Lehman, Jordan Davis, Jessy Randall, Carson Cistulli, and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch were among his students.

In 1973, poet Nicolas Born's poems were translated into German for the Rowohlt Verlag's famous "red-frame series."

In early January 1968, Koch had a meeting with the anarchist organisation Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. A member of the congregation stepped in and pointed a handgun at the podium, yelling "Koch!" at a poetry reading at St. Mark's Church. One blank round was shot before firing one blank round. The poet recovered his composure and proclaimed the "shooter" rather than the "shooter."

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