Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry Hardcover - 1998

From the publisher

In "Making Your Own Days", celebrated poet Kenneth Koch writes about poetry as no one has written about it before-- and as if no one had written about it before. Full of fresh and exciting insights and experiences, this book makes the somewhat mysterious subject of poetry clear for those who read it and for those who write it-- and for those who would like to read it and write it better. Koch accomplishes this revelation of poetry by presenting the idea that poetry is a separate language, a language in which music and sound are as important as syntax or meaning. Thus he is able to clarify the many aspects of poetry: the nature of poetic inspiration, what happens when a poet is writing a poem, revision, and what actually goes on while one is reading a poem-- how confusion or only partial understanding eventually leads to truly experiencing a poem. The language of poetry, like other languages, can be learned by reading it and writing it. To assist the reader in learning the language of poetry, Koch provides a rich anthology of poems-- each accompanied by an explanatory note-- specially designed to complement and illuminate his text. There are lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and from poetic plays, poems in English and in translation. Among the poets whose work is included are Homer, Ovid, Sappho, Shakespeare, Byron, Dickinson, Baudelaire, Li Bel, Stevens, Williams, Lorca, Ashbery, and Snyder. In this book, Kenneth Koch's genius for making poetry clear and bringing out its real pleasures is everywhere apparent.