The Art of Love: Poems

I first discovered Kenneth Koch in a Boston bookshop, looking through volumes of poetry while waiting for a friend. I read a few excerpts from "The Collected Poems" ('Talking to Patrizia' and 'To Marina' were the first two I read). Later on, I invested in my own copy. Recently, I took the Art of Love out of a local library and read it, not necessarily in the correct order, in one or two sittings. The poems found within this collection, besides "The Circus" are over-the-top, at points laugh-out-loud manuals on how to appreciate beauty, read and write poetry and how to truly love a woman (by tying her arms behind her back to make her breasts look pretty!). Most of the poems in this book are lengthy but they are quick and enjoyable reads just the same because of Koch's funloving, optimistic voice. If you find the time, this is an absolutely a worthwhile read.

As I see that there has been only one review of this book, I feel compelled to add another voice. I will be brief: reading any of Kenneth Koch's extended poems requires patience, humor, and a willingness to suspend judgement until all the stanzas have been read, and read again, since Koch often purposefully allows the casual reader to be misled. Koch often seems to be deliberately offensive in his poems (the first sections of "The Art of Love" is one example), though it is through this device t he culls the serious reader from those who might get the over-arching compassion and wonder that is present in all of Kenneth Koch's work.P.S. -- Kenneth Koch passed away earlier this month; an interview with him is preserved in the National Public Radio Archive.

This is a book of poetry quite unlike anything available these days. Drawing from a vast range of history, locations and experiences (both literary and physical) Kenneth Koch achieves a brilliant and thorough description of love that remains timeless