THANK YOU AND OTHER POEMS

by Kenneth Koch ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Kenneth Koch is the sort of screwball surrealist Auden, at his most frivolous, might have become if he'd grown up in the Midwest during the thirties and reached New York- Paris manhood in the fifties along with abstract expressionism and jazz. He has a sassy gracefulness, a roughneck elegance; he loves literary spoofing (""I thought Axel's Castle was garage)"", Americans spoofing (""Father came in wearing his Dick Tracy tie""), exclamatory excitement ("" corpuscles; O wax town!""). Like some of the best of the ""beats"" (fellow-poets O'Hara, Whalen; painter Rivers) and a few of the overseas greats (Michaux, Mayakovsky), he sets up fast and funny fireworks, dazzling displays of sense and nonsense, but he's always in danger of having a ball long after the party ended, of getting by on sheer nerve, not verve, or of ultimately becoming the Ogden Nash of the avant garde (""I am not recommending that poets like each other and organize to fight them/ But simply that lightning should strike them""). For the coffee houses, a bonbon.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION