Part journal, part sketchbook, and wholly original, here is a window into the life and art of one of America's most treasured poets and teachers.
The Art of the Possible: Comics Mostly without Pictures is infused with the same energetic wordplay, humor, and tenderness as the best of Kenneth Koch's poems, and illustrated and lettered in his own hand, studded with visual puns and jokes, peopled with recognizable characters from the worlds of arts and letters.
Recurring themes and serial comics include: the Brer Comics, starring Brer Fox and his love interest Ella; the Virgil Thompson comics, set in the Chelsea Hotel and featuring Aaron Copland, John Cage, Lillian Hellman, Twiggy, Miles Davis, and other fab figures of the milieu; the Autobiography Comics, which tell of the birth of Koch's daughter Angela; the Artist in his Studio Comics; and the Dead White Man Comics.
In the final comic in collection, "Global Charming," Koch writes: "A phenomenon is isolated called 'Global Charming.' Here's what it means: Life on earth becomes more and more delightful," and The Art of the Possible is our best evidence of that assertion.
Kenneth Koch published many volumes of poetry. His short plays, many of them produced off- and off-off-Broadway, are collected in The Gold Standard: A Book of Plays and One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays. He also wrote several books about poetry, including Wishes, Lies, and Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. His fiction is brought together in Collected Fiction. He was the winner of the Bollingen Prize (1995) and the Bobbitt Library of Congress Poetry Prize (1996), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (1995) and the National Book Award (2000), and winner of the first annual Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award (2001). Kenneth Koch lived with his wife, Karen, in New York City and taught at Columbia University. He died in 2002.
Part journal, part sketchbook, and wholly original, here is a window into the life and art of one of America's most treasured poets and teachers.
The Art of the Possible: Comics Mostly without Pictures is infused with the same energetic wordplay, humor, and tenderness as the best of Kenneth Koch's poems, and illustrated and lettered in his own hand, studded with visual puns and jokes, peopled with recognizable characters from the worlds of arts and letters.
Recurring themes and serial comics include: the Brer Comics, starring Brer Fox and his love interest Ella; the Virgil Thompson comics, set in the Chelsea Hotel and featuring Aaron Copland, John Cage, Lillian Hellman, Twiggy, Miles Davis, and other fab figures of the milieu; the Autobiography Comics, which tell of the birth of Koch's daughter Angela; the Artist in his Studio Comics; and the Dead White Man Comics.
In the final comic in collection, "Global Charming," Koch writes: "A phenomenon is isolated called 'Global Charming.' Here's what it means: Life on earth becomes more and more delightful," and The Art of the Possible is our best evidence of that assertion.
Creators
Kenneth Koch published many volumes of poetry. His short plays, many of them produced off- and off-off-Broadway, are collected in The Gold Standard: A Book of Plays and One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays. He also wrote several books about poetry, including Wishes, Lies, and Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. His fiction is brought together in Collected Fiction. He was the winner of the Bollingen Prize (1995) and the Bobbitt Library of Congress Poetry Prize (1996), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (1995) and the National Book Award (2000), and winner of the first annual Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award (2001). Kenneth Koch lived with his wife, Karen, in New York City and taught at Columbia University. He died in 2002.
