Monday 8 July 2002

categories: Regrets; Things that are Gone

Café Seaport on William and Fulton no longer seems to have a “Hibachi,” what I would have called a Mongolian grill. Worms. 4:28:27 PM    comment []

categories: Hostage to Crap, Regrets; Things that are Gone

Kenneth Koch wrote The Art of Love, a long, discursive poem that, to me at least, put him in a tradition older than the New York School, one stretching to Ovid and perhaps earlier. It inspired me to make an attempt at a response, an art of forgetting, written, if I recall correctly, either in alexandrines or iambic tetrameter. Not only did he teach college students to write poetry—not unusual—but children (Ruby Your Rose is Red [?]) and the elderly (). In this fallen age, when poetry is usually considered dead, what better tribute do I have than, “his poetry begot poetry.” Hm; don’t have any of the books I mentioned in my library—I only have The Duplications, the sequel to Ko (?). I read them at University, when I had access to a University library (sigh). Kenneth Koch, Poet of New York School, Is Dead at 77 By ALAN FEUER Mr. Koch (pronounced coke) was considered a founding member of the New York School, an avant-garde poetic movement that was forged in the Manhattan of the 1950's when the beer at the Cedar Tavern flowed as smoothly as the passionate talk about Abstract Expressionist art. He and his contemporaries [~] the poets John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara and the painters Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers [~] took up the brash, anti-establishment mantle of their beatnik predecessors, but with a more classically European touch and with less machismo and facial hair. Later in life, Mr. Koch became well known as a professor of poetry, mainly at Columbia University, where he lectured on literature and inspired budding writers for nearly 40 years. He was a spontaneous, high-octane teacher who was not above leaping onto desks to prove a point and who, for many years, taught writing to grade-school children, claiming that poetry was as thrilling as stickball. He will be missed. 7:04:58 AM    comment []