We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures Of Reading And
Product Description From one of the most esteemed American poets of the twenty-first century comes a celebration of poetry and an invitation for anyone to experience its beauty and wonder. Full of fresh and exciting insights, Making Your Own Days illuminates the somewhat mysterious subject of poetry for those who read it and for those who write it—as well as for those who would like to read and write it better. By treating poetry not as a special use of language but as a distinct language—unlike the one used in prose and conversation—Koch clarifies the nature of poetic inspiration, how poems are written and revised, and what happens to the heart and mind while reading a poem. Koch also provides a rich anthology of more than ninety works from poets past and present. Lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and poetic plays, poems in English, and poems in translation from Homer and Sappho to Lorca, Snyder, and Ashbery; each selection is accompanied by an explanatory note designed to complement and clarify the text and to put pleasure back into the experience of poetry. Review Michael Dirda The Washington Post Book World Kenneth Koch is one of our finest living poets.... Making Your Own Days is...exhilarating. David Lehman American Poetry Review A poet of the highest originality....[Koch] has stretched our ideas of what it is possible to do in poetry. Frank Kermode I would recommend Koch's way of teaching poetry above all others. His book is informative, witty, and surprising. It's also authoritative...it is a precious defense of poetry. Ned Rorem Koch is that rare phenomenon, the poet who can write prose -- prose that is necessary and lucid. In his book, he offers a new and healthy dimension to the life of virtually everyone. About the Author Kenneth Koch is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Straits, and won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1994. He has also published fiction and plays, as well as books on the teaching of poetry: Wishes, Lies and Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and I Never Told Anybody. He lives in New York City, where he is professor of English at Columbia University. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 The Two Languages Poetry is often regarded as a mystery, and in some respects it is one. No one is quite sure where poetry comes from, no one is quite sure exactly what it is, and no one knows, really, how anyone is able to write it. The Greeks thought, or at least said, that it came from the Muse, but in our time no one has been able to find her. The Unconscious has been offered as a substitute, but that, too, is hard to locate. How anyone is able to write it is explained in this way: the poet is a Genius who receives inspiration. One way to get a little more clarity on the subject was suggested to me by something Paul Valéry said when he was thinking about the things that could be said in poetry and not otherwise: he said that poetry was a separate language or, more specifically, a "language within a language." There would be, in that case, the ordinary language -- for Valéry French, for us English -- and, somehow existing inside its boundaries, another: "the language of poetry." Valéry let it go at that; he went on to talk about other things. I thought it worth taking literally and seeing where it might lead; I thought it might explain something important about how poems are written and how they can be read. According to this idea, a poet could be described as someone who writes in the language of poetry. Talent is required for doing it welt, but there are things that can help this talent to appear and to have an effect -- for example, you have to learn this particular language, which you do by reading it and writing it. The language itself helps to explain inspiration, which is always, at a certain point in its development, the appearance of some phrase or sentence in the poetic language. You may be moved by the
