Kenneth Koch Centennial

Fellow Columbia University alumnus, fellow iconoclastic American poet, fellow goof-ball,  there is much that binds these two, Kenneth Koch and Allen Ginsberg, (it is perhaps no coincidence that Koch’s “Fresh Air” and Ginsberg’s “Howl”, both groundbreaking poems, both appeared in the same year, 1956) – an explosion in the face of a suffocating conformity, the liberation, necessary liberation, each in their own way, of the “Beat Generation” and the “New York School”.

Looking back on his earliest writing,  Koch astutely observed:
“The social and literary context of these poems was the early ‘fifties New York art and poetry world, at least the part of it that I knew. This included the dramatic, splashy, beautiful paintings of Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers, and Frank O’Hara‘s seemingly endless inspiration and John Ashbery‘s eloquent mysteriousness. We poets and painters hung around a lot together, showed each other our works, and were made by this camaraderie very (or more than otherwise) ambitious, envious, emulous, and, I think, lucky.  Everyone had an immediately available audience that had no reason not to be critical or enthusiastic..”
The coterie, the camaraderie, the mutual support (much overseen by Allen) of the Beat Generation writers also provided, for those writers, this back-up.

Both Allen and Kenneth were featured (along with many others), back in 1966, in Richard O Moore‘s remarkable WNET series USA Poetry,
Kenneth’s appearance we spotlighted on The Allen Ginsberg Project – here

 also on The Allen Ginsberg Project – Kenneth’s May 26 1979 visit to Naropa

with the follow-up Q  & A.  here and here

and Kenneth returned the following month to give this reading with Allen (and Anne Waldman)

Anne’s interview with Kenneth , from around that time, is well worth reading

as is Mark Hillringhouse‘s  (from 1985)

as is John Tranter’s (from 1989) (and check out his tribute to him in Jacket 

David Kennedy interviews Kenneth  (in 1993)

and don’t miss Jordan Davis and “The Leonard Cohen Story” 

In fact, don’t miss Jordan Davis’ illuminating interview first published in the American Poetry Review in 1995 and collected in The Art of Poetry, 1996

Kenneth is nothing if not eloquent.

Jordan’s reading with Kenneth at The St Mark’s Poetry Project, in November 1999 (along with a trove of other recorded materials) can be found on the Kenneth Koch page on the exemplary PennSound – here

Jordan also provided a fascinating over-view of Kenneth the teacher, last year, for the Poetry Foundation – here

He also provided the introduction to The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch.  (2005)

and co-edited The Banquet  (Plays, Films & Librettos by Kenneth Koch). (2013)

companion books to

The Collected Poems (2005)

and

On The Edge – Collected Long Poems (2009)

The full Koch bibliography can be found –  here

For recordings of Kenneth reading, we send you first to the aforementioned PennSound

and to Kenneth’s own web-site – here

Here’s Kenneth reading in 1960 for the Library of Congress (and see here, 16 years later, in 1976)

Here’s (from 1969) him reading “The Study of Happiness”

and reading at Sir George Williams University, Montreal (introduced by George Bowering), in 1971

Here‘s (from 1974) Kenneth reading two classic poems (“Variations on A Theme By William Carlos Williams”  and “The Circus”) at the New York Studio School

Here‘s him reading in 1990 at the St Mark’s Poetry Project (with Thomas Disch)

Three years earlier, here’s Koch “sharing his inspirations, giving advice on writing and reading his poetry” on “Fresh Air”  –  (and here’s Koch reading “Fresh Air”)

1995 he wins the Bollingen Prize

 Kenneth Koch’s New York Times obituary

Kenneth Koch’s papers were acquired in 2008 by the New York Public Library. See biographers, Susannah Hollister and Emily Setina‘s “Birdwatching with Kenneth Koch” – here
(and “Kenneth Koch’s War” – here)

Rudy Burckhardt’s film – Kenneth Koch poem  – “On Aesthetics”: