On the Edge: Collected Long Poems - Couverture rigide

Koch, Kenneth

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0307262847 ISBN 13 : 9780307262844

Editeur : Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2007

Synopsis

Book by Koch Kenneth

A propos du livre

Extrait

On the Edge is a collection of six long narrative poems by Kenneth Koch.
Here are excerpts from three of them.

Ko, Or a Season on Earth

Meanwhile at the University of Japan
Ko had already begun his studies, which
While making him an educated man
Would also give him as he learned to pitch
And catch—for Ko was more than a mere fan,
But wished as a playing member to do a hitch
With some great team—something to think about
More interesting than merely Safe and Out.

Inyaga, his professor, when he first
Appeared to Ko, seemed fashioned like an ape,
Protruding jaw and tiny eyes that burst
From high cheekbones of chimpanzee shape,
But later it was his teaching that Ko cursed,
Of which the body merely was the drape:
Inyaga taught him baseball was a sin.
Ko cried out! Inyaga; "Stop that din

At once, or else you'll suffer!" Ko subsides,
But his resentment every day gets greater.
Meanwhile the Dodgers all had taken brides
As was arranged for them by Mr. Slater,
Their crafty manager, who thus provides
A human interest for the fans, who, later,
When they find out his trick, will make him pay;
But for the moment it is Slater's day.
Impressions of Africa

In the great, bracing air of Kenya
The lion runs. Seeing a lion
And two lionesses together,
The Italian woman said,
"È il leone,
La sua moglie, e la sua madre"—
Id est, the wife's mother,
A sort of chaperone
To the lion and to his wife.

The lion's muscles
Are amazing. The air
Is filled with lions' grace.
Viewed without any
Human component around,
The lion is sensational
Simply of and in himself.
Seasons on Earth

In spite of the real suffering around me,
And poverty, and spite, I had the sense
That there was something else. Each midday found me
Ecstatically in the present tense,
Writing. And you would have eto come and pound me
Quite hard to drag me from my innocence.
That sense that now seems almost unbelievable—
I love it, loved it—is it irretrievable?

Présentation de l'éditeur

On the Edge is a collection of the six longer masterpieces by one of the most beloved and accomplished poets of our time.

Full of exclamation and exaggeration but also graced with dry wit and comic sophistication, these poems contain some of Kenneth Koch’s most original work. When the Sun Tries to Go On is a young man’s radical song of himself and his freshly discovered and expanding universe. Ko, or A Season on Earth is an epic invention filled with such memorably powerful characters as a rookie baseball star whose pitches knock down grandstands, and Joseph Dah, whose poems transform him into whatever he writes about. In The Duplications Koch’s inventions expand into Ovidian twists as Commander Papend builds a life-sized replica of Venice in Peru and a chemist discovers a way to make young women out of the soil of Finland. In the elegiac Seasons on Earth and in two meditative autobiographical sequences, Impressions of Africa and On the Edge, Koch’s protean expressions of emotion make obvious his genius for evoking the mystery and excitement of the fact of existence and the passage of time.

Distinctly and irrepressibly Koch throughout, these works heighten our appreciation of his achievement. On the Edge is the perfect companion volume to the critically acclaimed Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch, about which John Ashbery, in Publishers Weekly, said, “The products of a lifetime are on display in this awe-inspiring banquet of a book.”

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Date d'édition: 2007
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0307262847
• ISBN 13: 9780307262844
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 411
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Authorised Representative Service; ar.info@doceupoint.com; ; 77 Camden Street Lower; Dublin; Dublin; D02 XE80; Irlande