Koch, Kenneth : Columbia University in the City of New York

Kenneth Koch has published many volumes of poetry, most recently Straits and One Train. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1995, and in 1996 he received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry awarded by the Library of Congress. His short plays, many of them produced off- and off-off-Broadway, are collected in The Gold Standard: A Book of Plays. He has also written several books about poetry, including Wishes, Lies, and Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and, most recently, Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. He lives in New York City with his wife, Karen, and teaches at Columbia University.

First published to enormous acclaim in 1973, this book became a classic that revolutionized the way children are taught to read and write poetry. The celebrated poet Kenneth Koch conveys the imaginative splendor of great poetry--by Blake, Donne, Stevens, Lorca, and others--and then shows how it maybe taught so as to help children write poetry of their own. For this edition, the author has written a new introduction and a special afterword for teachers.