New Addresses

Kenneth Koch who has already considerably stretched our ideas of what it is possible to do in poetry (David Lehman) here takes on the classic poetic device of apostrophe or direct address. His use of it gives him yet another chance to say things never said before in prose or in verse and as well to bring new life to a form in which Donne talked to Death Shelley to the West Wind Whitman to the Earth Pound to his Songs O''Hara to the Sun at Fire Island.. Koch in this new book talks to things important in his life -- to Breath to World War Two to Orgasms to the French Language to Jewishness to Psychoanalysis to Sleep to his Heart to Friendship to High Spirits to his Twenties to the Unknown. He makes of all these new addresses an exhilarating autobiography of a most surprising and unforeseeable kind.