New addresses : poems / Kenneth Koch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koch, Kenneth, 1925-2002.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Genre:

Poetry.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

ix, 73 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 2000.

Summary:

New Addesses is something new for the versatile Koch, a series of poems similar in form that work together like a jigsaw memoir, a personal encyclopedia. In each poem the author directly addresses in the second person, as "you" -- ideas or objects or past events that have been important to him, such as "some baskets", "adolescence", "Jewishness", "my twenties", "my father's business", "the Roman Forum". These are sly, witty, exuberant poems whose deceptively easy sounds and rhythms sing in the mind like unforgettable songs. Readers will find humor and resonance in this collection.

To Driving

Wherever you went, there were woods

Driveways, cars, and places to have picnic! And attention to you, driving,

Meant less attention to the one beside. Soon she'd be driving

And I would look outside. Withour your efforts I'd not ever have seen

The underhalf of Louisiana green

And the red and white, or have had the place to ask my father the question I did about driving. He said You must stay on the road.

Increasingly, as the trip goes on,

You become the main thing it is and rightly so. What would we do

Without you there, quick and slow dreaming both interior and exterior --

Without your assurance that "Wherever I am, there you shall be

Even if it is in Mexico or Vermont. You stand by me

And I will stay with you, for I am Driving,

Memory that, whenever stopped, can be renewed".

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy is fourth printing, January 2001.

ISBN:

0375410279

OCLC:

42726151