A book-length biography of New York School poet Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), innovator in avant-garde art and poetry teaching.

FAIN: FT-286432-22

Susannah Lang Hollister
Unaffiliated Independent Scholar (Hightstown, NJ 08520-3814)

Research and writing a biography of U.S. poet Kenneth Koch (1925-2002).

This biography will be the first book-length study of U.S. poet Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), a major, if under-examined figure in the postwar avant-garde and a force for literary innovation into the 21st century. Known as a founding New York School poet and an innovator in poetry pedagogy, Koch was powerful and polarizing well beyond those roles. He insisted on pleasure in art, infusing American poetry with a radical, buoyant energy while also linking it to other forms, from theater to comics to classroom teaching. This comprehensive account of his social worlds, relationships, and writing shows experimental art reaching outward to make poetry a source of connection—on Koch’s alternately liberating and conservative terms. Using extensive archival materials and interviews, the biography reveals the workings of a collaborative and competitive artistic circle and the legacy of a poet intent on opening its excitements to a varied public, including readers and writers as young as 8 years old.