Miscellany April 18, 2013: [caption id="attachment_65234" align="alignright" width="500"] James Boswell[/caption] The problem with Koch’s books about teaching children to write poetry is that his method does not teach them to be poets. It teaches them to make what will look like poems to us—but like diddling around to them. • There should be a magazine called [...] by Anthony Madrid

Code Unknown: John Ashbery April 3, 2013: In his workshop at the New School for Social Research, when I took it, in 1959, Kenneth Koch read and talked about John Ashbery’s work with his, Kenneth’s, customary sense of modern poetry as made from a play of associations. The surface of a poem was analogous to the expanse of a sensibility’s intensities and diffusions in the course of [...] by Bill Berkson

To My Heart As I Go Along February 18, 2013: The space between our mouth and the people’s ears, or eyes, who receive what we make, that is holy ground. —Fred Rogers Poetry recently received a heartening email from artist and writer Paul Zelevansky about his new project, “Mister Rogers for Adults.” Zelevansky, on behalf of the Fred Rogers Company, is developing a series of [...] by Fred Sasaki

The Aesthetic Tensions in Kent Johnson’s A Question Mark Above the Sun December 10, 2012: Over at The New Republic is a review of Kent Johnson's new book, A Question Mark Above the Sun (1st ed., Punch Press; 2nd ed., Starcherone Books) which aims to illuminate "the mystery behind Frank O'Hara's most famous poem." That's "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," unearthed by Kenneth Koch at an O'Hara memorial reading; [...] by Harriet Staff

Happy Birthday, Kenneth Koch! February 28, 2012: Happy Birthday, Kenneth Koch! Koch would have been 87 today. We really like this interview between Koch and John Ashbery, republished by This Recording last January, and originally printed as a chapbook, "A Conversation with Kenneth Koch," in 1965 (Interview Press). At top, Koch rehearsing for a play in 1977. Amazingly, Ashbery and Koch could [...] by Harriet Staff

Given Giving January 8, 2010: [audio:http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Sotere3.mp3] by Sotère Torregian

“She is mirage I feverishly address as specific” November 20, 2009: Spent some time in a clinic today, the waiting turning into an interesting duration (every time I encounter the word duration I think of Kenneth Koch staring off into space during an interview saying, “everything lasts a certain period of time….that’s very odd”) within which to read more of Virginia Woolf’s Between The Acts. But once the [...] by Anselm Berrigan