Koch, Kenneth

Speaking the Truth in Love
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • Speaking the Truth in Love
  • Incredibly practical tool for interpersonal communication
  • Wow, what a lesson to learn!
 Speaking the Truth in Love
Kenneth C. Haugk , and Ruth Koch
Manufacturer: Stephen Ministries
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0963383116

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Speaking the Truth in Love.......2005-10-04

When I received my copy of above book I could not believe I received such a clean book. In fact, I felt like I had received a new book. I am very impressed with your used book department and appreciate the service I received.

The book is just what I need at this point in my life and I am very happy I chose the book.

Amazon.com is wonderful!!!

5 out of 5 stars Incredibly practical tool for interpersonal communication.......1999-01-19

Before reading this book, I suffered from a sort of horror of non-fiction. However, Speaking The Truth in Love is non-threatening, practical, and attainable. The principles shared are deep, loving, and in no way narrow. Given a fair chance, they can be life changing. Encouragement to true assertiveness that respects others as well as yourself is gently but firmly emphasized. The Christian community especially would do well to assimilate its principles into classes, small groups, and requested reading for all potential church leaders. This is a powerful book that deserves a much wider audience than it has yet reached. It is worth every penny I spent and more!

5 out of 5 stars Wow, what a lesson to learn!.......1998-07-16

I never really knew I could be assertive. Thanks to this book, I am now lovingly assertive. This book focuses on teaching you to be Christ-like in your assertiveness. It's a must read for anyone who wants to be more Christ-like!!
Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • A superb introduction to the art of writing poetry
  • The Book to Make April Special
  • Every teacher should read this - and use it!
  • Worth its weight in gold
 Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry
Kenneth Koch , and Ron Padgett
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060955090

Book Description

The classic, inspiring account of a poet's experience teaching school children to write poetry

When Kenneth Koch entered the Manhattan classrooms of P.S. 61, the children, excited by the opportunity to work with an instructor able to inspire their talent and energy, would clap and shout with pleasure. In this vivid account, Koch describes his inventive methods for teaching these children how to create poems and gives numerous examples of their work. Wishes, Lies, and Dreams is a valuable text for all those who care about freeing the creative imagination and educating the young.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars A superb introduction to the art of writing poetry.......2007-05-30

Some 35+ years after its initial publication, this remains one of the finest books about writing poetry -- and not just for children, either! Kenneth Koch walks a delicate & difficult line here, trusting in the experiences & imaginations of children, yet also emphasizing (in an unforced but gently firm manner) the need for work & craft. Most of all, it demystifies poetry without stripping it of its wonder & magic, making it accessible to all who are willing to meet it halfway. There's never a note of condescension here, just a genuine love of poetry & the expectation that any aspiring poet will give his or her all in creating poems. Most highly recommended!

5 out of 5 stars The Book to Make April Special.......2006-02-07

April is National Poetry Month. Here's a book that will bring the joy of poetry to your classroom. The title exercises are especially effective. The kids in our library loved to list lies! It sounds so simple. Try it--it's pure magic.

5 out of 5 stars Every teacher should read this - and use it!.......2003-09-06

I was first introduced to this marvelous book as a sophomore in an advanced placement English and History class in high school. An older graduate of the program had gone on to study poetry under Kenneth Koch at Columbia University, and returned to share what he had learned.

Now, with Bachelor's Degrees in both English and Elementary Education and a Master's in Language, Linguistics and Culture, I still consider WISHES, LIES, AND DREAMS to be the single best book on teaching writing that I have ever read.

Koch does not waste time with "assessment" of students' skills, collecting data, or any of the other peripheral matters that clutter most writing "methods" texts. This book is about WRITING, about inspiring students to write, about focusing the talents students already have but might not know that they possess.

I first used this book as a teacher when I was student teaching with a class of recalcitrant fifth graders who had been taught strictly by the text throughout their elementary school years. They almost unanimously declared that they hated writing. Employing Koch's ideas and combining them with the District-required skills lessons, I successfully taught these students what they needed to know - and they loved it!

After I began teaching in my own classroom, I used WLD with my students in bilingual third grade classes. Again, we were successful, even with second-language learners. Years later, when I began teaching second grade, and last year, when I worked with first graders, this book was an essential part of our writing program.

Having been an elementary school teacher now for eleven years, I have come to the conclusion that the best teachers begin with the students' interests and talents, then direct this energy toward teaching the students what they don't know.

Even though the subtitle is "Teaching Children to Write Poetry", the ideas Koch presents serve as a starting point for introducing children to other forms of writing. While the book is directed primarily toward elementary school students, I cannot imagine that high schoolers and even college students could not benefit from it.

Best of all, Koch himself takes up little space explaining to us, telling us how to teach, or - as so many methodology text writers tend to do - ramble on for page after page stating the obvious. Most of the book is filled with examples of writing from the STUDENTS Koch worked with in the New York City Public Schools. These brief poems provide students with a concrete example of what children before them have written, and inspire them to write their own poetry.

The Six-Traits writing process hadn't even been invented (or at least hadn't been named that) when this book was published over thirty years ago, but I found it easy to find examples of good use of Voice, Word Choice, Conventions, Ideas, and Sentence Fluency throughout the book.

No matter what program your school district requires, WLD will help provide inspiration. Teachers can easily supplement skills and grammar lessons in addition to Koch's marvelous ideas, and will probably think of millions more.

If you're not a teacher, sit down with your children and read this book together, read the children's poems, and try some of the ideas. You'll probably end up recommending WLD to your child's teacher - and he'll be glad you did.

5 out of 5 stars Worth its weight in gold.......2000-04-14

This is one book I can't do without. I was introduced to Kenneth Koch's work when I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison taking a workshop from an author who had taught with Koch. It has been my "writing Bible" ever since. I have used almost every exercise at one time or another with elementary school children, with fantastic results. Along with Koch's "Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?", this is a classic.
Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?: Teaching Great Poetry to Children
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • Not Just For Kids
  • Written with Reverence and Fun
  • Great for Elementary Kids
  • Inspiring AND freeing
  • Excellent "hands on" teaching method for great poetry.
 Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?: Teaching Great Poetry to Children
Kenneth Koch
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679724710
Release Date: 1990-06-16

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Not Just For Kids.......2004-06-26

This excellent book seems to be a missing link in writing instruction. Other books provide somewhat mechanical methods for generating writing ideas, but Koch's book leads the reader into natural lines of thought which connect the reader with his or her experience of life, experience from which the writing must flow. I am pretty sure this would work for any kind of writing and is not limited to poetry. Don't be too proud to use this book on yourself!

5 out of 5 stars Written with Reverence and Fun.......2002-02-11

Mr. Koch will not underestimate children. He will not talk down, dumb down, water down, because a passion for the subject matter animates this book as it must animate his instruction. He carefully documents and shares children's work as if it is as important as the poetry that inspired it.

Like anything truly sublime, the unspoken lesson enlivens this book . If you really share what you love with students, guide them instead of showing them, ask instead of telling, and treat their products with the respect you'd give a visiting artist, they will produce art as amazing as Mr. Koch's students did.

Forget teaching poetry to children- teach poetry instead. Take the concept and apply it to all creative acts. Teach art from great and challenging art. Teach music from powerful, sophisticated music. They can not only take it, they'll take it and keep it.

5 out of 5 stars Great for Elementary Kids.......1999-04-09

I used this book to introduce unrhymed poetry to a fourth grade class. They just knew that they were going to HATE poetry, but after they were exposed to these poems and had a chance to write their own, they were upset when the poetry unit was over. They loved the poems written by other children that Koch included.

5 out of 5 stars Inspiring AND freeing.......1999-01-23

This book was one with which I was taught in high school twenty years ago, and not only did it help me to connect with a personal style, but it also enhanced my appreciation of Whitman and Ginsburg. It stimulated ALL my other classmates in finding a voice and appreciation.

5 out of 5 stars Excellent "hands on" teaching method for great poetry........1998-10-21

Teachers of poetry from elementary to high school will enjoy teaching poetry with this method or incorporating the ideas into existing curriculum. I had success with it in ninth grade. Younger students would like it even more. The method uses great poems as starting points for children's own writing, and many examples are provided.
The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • A Powerhouse
  • Hi! May I introduce Kenneth Koch?
 The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch
Kenneth Koch
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1400044995
Release Date: 2005-11-01

Book Description

Kenneth Koch has been called “one of our greatest poets” by John Ashbery, and “a national treasure” in the 2000 National Book Award Finalist Citation.

Now, for the first time, all of the poems in his ten collections–from Sun Out, poems of the 1950s, to Thank You, published in 1962, to A Possible World, published in 2002, the year of the poet’s death–are gathered in one volume.

Celebrating the pleasures of friendship, art, and love, the poetry of Kenneth Koch has been dazzling readers for fifty years. Charter member–along with Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler–of the New York School of poets, avant-garde playwright and fiction writer, pioneer teacher of writing to children, Koch gave us some of the most exciting and aesthetically daring poems of his generation.

These poems take sensuous delight in the life of the mind and the heart, often at the same time: “O what a physical effect it has on me / To dive forever into the light blue sea / Of your acquaintance!” (“In Love with You”).

Here is Koch’s early work: love poems like “The Circus” and “To Marina” and such well-remembered comic masterpieces as “Fresh Air,” “Some General Instructions,” and “The Boiling Water” (“A serious moment for the water is when it boils”). And here are the brilliant later poems–“One Train May Hide Another,” the deliciously autobiographical address in New Addresses, and the stately elegy “Bel Canto”–poems that, beneath a surface of lightness and wit, speak with passion, depth, and seriousness to all the most important moments in one’s existence.

Charles Simic wrote in The New York Review of Books that, for Koch, poetry “has to be constantly saved from itself. The idea is to do something with language that has never been done before.” In the ten exuberant, hilarious, and heartbreaking books of poems collected here, Kenneth Koch does exactly that.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars A Powerhouse.......2006-12-27

It's hard to believe there has only been one other review of this book, which has been out for months now. Granted it is a collection of works that (may) have already been published. And it is awfully big, especially in an already overcrowded apartment. But still, this is a work of great magnitude and an extraordinary collection by this extraordinary poet. Some of his poems are so immediate, I feel I can hear his voice as he is spontaneously creating them. And yet, only someone with great skill and insight can make poetry seem so effortless and free wheeling. If I were king, and I am still hoping, I would decree a copy of this collection in every house in the realm. That's how good it is.

5 out of 5 stars Hi! May I introduce Kenneth Koch?.......2005-11-04

Something inside me resists calling Kenneth Koch my favorite poet. His poems are too conversational, too easy-going, too entertaining to be so important. Except the one that made me break out in laughter while I was reading it on a treadmill at Bally's. And the one that made me cry (on that same treadmill, damn it!) And the one that scared me--really scared me--because simply, lightly, even jokingly, it presented a truth I absolutely did not want to hear. . .Now that I think of it, I realize that without any special effort on my part, I formed the kind of relationship with Koch that folks back in the old country had with Yevtushenko, Bloch or Pushkin. (Without any effort on my part, I say--all the effort was Koch's.) Koch is dead now, of course. But open the pages of this book, and he'll become a part of your life as well--as a friend, a teacher, a soulmate.
One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • An Overlooked Gem...
 One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays
Kenneth Koch
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0394758978
Release Date: 1988-05-12

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars An Overlooked Gem..........2001-02-22

I first picked up this book in a bargain bin....I must admit I only liked the cover, that's why I bought it! Later, when I decided to read some of the content, I was dumbfounded! This is a collection of off-the-wall "plays" that can be compared to nothing I've ever read....plays whose main characters are punctuation, or Shakespearean, or from nursery rhymes, and greek myth. This is both a very light and very heavy read, all at the same time...a nice brain tweak!
Sleeping on the Wing: An Anthology of Modern Poetry with Essays on Reading and Writing
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • R. Elliott
  • Senior Citizen Poetry Study Group
  • It Works!
  • You Won't Get Sleepy Reading Sleeping on the Wing
 Sleeping on the Wing: An Anthology of Modern Poetry with Essays on Reading and Writing
Kenneth Koch , and Kate Farrell
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0394743644
Release Date: 1982-02-12

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars R. Elliott.......2007-05-15

Excellent book. Arrived promptly. I would have liked to see a more modern selection of poets - ah well.

5 out of 5 stars Senior Citizen Poetry Study Group.......2005-08-19

We used "Sleeping on the Wing" in our Senior Citizen poetry study group. It was clear and understandable to persons who had little or no background in poetry (many thought "if it didn't rhyme it wasn't poetry") We also had persons who had studied poetry before - even an English teacher - who found it instructive. It was a wonderful book for our diverse group.

We especially liked the selection of poets, some all of us had heard about before - Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats - and others most of us were unfamiliar with - Rainer Maria Rilke, Guillaume Apollinaire, Federico Garcia Lorca. The editors describe each author's poetry in such an exciting way we were drawn into the emotions of the words, the sounds, the images, without feeling our study was too technical. Each week we eagerly looked forward to the next poet. It was like opening doors for us - twenty three doors!

Our group is not a writing group but a few people did write poems following the suggestions of the editors. We were all delighted with the results, including the authors. The rest of us are now thinking we will try too sometime!!

5 out of 5 stars It Works!.......2001-12-07

Having taught creative writing at the high-school level for almost ten years, I have been acquainted with a multitude of writing textbooks. SLEEPING ON THE WING is the only one which has worked as a whole. In my new course for 2001 entitled simply POETRY, I have used each and every poem collected and exercise designed here by Koch. They work. They're intelligent, focused, and student friendly. This selection of poetry from the modern canon is both challenging and accessible.

Best of all, this anthology is downright fun. Koch's glosses are straightforward and informative, and his exercises doubtlessly grow out of his own lifetime of experience with writing poetry. Since I write along with my classes, I, too, have been wildly pleased with my own poetry production using Koch's exercises.

This is a fine text for the autodidact who wishes to teach her- or himself how to write a poem. However, the energy and zest which flows from a larger group of young poets working together is invaluable as inspiration.

Mr. Koch, you are not simply a stuffy tweed from Columbialand. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and grace.

5 out of 5 stars You Won't Get Sleepy Reading Sleeping on the Wing.......2000-03-26

A wonderful anthology with short, lively pieces chosen especially for young people in high school, but the selection of poems may well delight readers of all ages -- not only beginners! Among the poets represented are not only predictable classics -- Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot -- but also such contemporaries as the post-moderns John Ashbery and Amiri Baraka. The selection of 23 poets -- American, British, European -- has a somewhat urban, playful quality reminiscent of the sixties: Koch is definitely New York School. New York City style or not, though, my colleagues and students upstate have found much here to intrigue them. The editorial comments and creative writing suggestions are especially valuable to teachers who want to make poetry come alive in the classroom. It's also worth noting that the book is well-designed: the poems look good on the page -- they invite the kind of reading and creative response they embody. From the very first poem we read together -- "Disillusionment at Ten O'clock" by Wallace Stevens (beginning "The houses are haunted / By white night-gowns" and ending with "an old sailor" who "Drunk and asleep in his boots / Catches tigers / In red weather") the class was wide awake.
I Never Told Anybody: Teaching Poetry Writing to Old People
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • Forget How- Ask "Why?"
  • Assumptions and Discoveries
 I Never Told Anybody: Teaching Poetry Writing to Old People
Kenneth Koch
Manufacturer: Teachers & Writers Collaborative
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0915924536

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars Forget How- Ask "Why?".......2001-10-03

The simplist, profoundest stories are laid out in a delicate and spare way by Koch's nursing home students. Don't shy away because it might be sad- rejoice that Koch got these stories before they were lost. These aren't the poems people might write to impress others or even themselves- they explore the things that matter most.

If you teach anything creative- think about why you teach it. To give job skills? To meet state goals? Those are both fine reasons. But Koch is teaching in a nursing home to profoundly affect how people look at their inner landscape. Do you teach to empower and to change lives? Would you like to think that's what you do? I would read this not as a how-to but a why-to.

5 out of 5 stars Assumptions and Discoveries.......2000-08-28

This book is a must for anyone working/playing with poetry and involved in introducing others to poetry. What is most astounding is Kenneth Koch's humility and honesty, and his willingness to admit mistakes made in teaching poetry to a group of old people at a nursing home. He divides the book very usefully as well. First he introduces the process from start to finish of the workshops, including some of the seniors' works. In the second half of the book, he prints the poems done by participants for each exercise first, then discusses what occurred during the session. One participant in particular is very much a poet, although he'd never written poetry before, and I fell quite in love with him. However, as the book went to press, Kenneth says, this man passed on. You will thouroughly enjoy this book. Aside from the poetry, it has alot to say about the assumptions we make about old and/or infirm people.
Kenneth Koch: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)
Average customer rating: Not rated
    		Kenneth Koch: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)
    Kenneth Koch
    Manufacturer: Library of America
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Hardcover

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    ASIN: 1598530062
    Release Date: 2007-04-05
    Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry
    Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
    • Good book for writers
    • Good book for writers
    • 4.7 stars : Something of a gem!
    • For writing, not just reading poetry.
    • Modern poetry in accessible form
    		 Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry
    Kenneth Koch
    Manufacturer: Touchstone
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    Binding: Paperback

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    ASIN: 0684824388

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    Ordinary mortals and poet scholars alike will find something to love in Koch's down-to-earth approach to making sense of that most head scratching of literary genres. Asserting that "poetry ... is a separate language," he steers clear of the stodgy, hidden-meaning school of deciphering poems (wherein the reader digs through the poem "for some elusive and momentous significance") and takes us instead on a tour through the tonal, rhythmical, and metrical aspects of poetry. Yes, it's about the music: "The sound of words is raised to an importance equal to that of their meaning, and also to the importance of grammar and syntax." But rather than asking us to simply take his word for it, Koch provides lively and insightful examples (including many rarely anthologized poems). For instance, why does "two and two are rather green" have little or no meaning, while "two and two / Are rather blue" smacks of the truth? Why does "I don't know whether or not to commit suicide" plop from the mouth like so much cold oatmeal, while "To be or not to be, that is the question" is so pleasing to the ears? Resonance, says Koch. "Poetry lasts because it gives the ambiguous and ever-changing pleasure of being both a statement and a song."

    Moving from poetry's music to its methods (comparisons, personifications, and apostrophe, to name a few), Koch continues to offer up an amusing and edifying array of excerpts and analogies to clarify his point that with poetry, "as with baseball ... one has to understand a little in order to enjoy it...." Insightful, yet never patronizing, Making Your Own Days is for anyone who's ever read a poem and wished it were more "like a newspaper article." Though Koch can't tell us why Wallace Stevens wrote "I placed a jar in Tennessee," or why "So much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow" (William Carlos Williams), he helps us listen to--and savor--that sometimes bewildering conglomeration of words otherwise known as poetry. --Martha Silano

    Book Description

    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 and write it better. Treating poetry not as a special use of language but, in fact, as a separate language -- unlike the one used in prose and conversation -- Koch is able to clarify the nature of poetic inspiration, how poems are written and revised, and what happens in a reader's mind and feelings while reading a poem.

    Koch also provides a rich anthology of more than ninety works: lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and poetic plays, poems in English, and poems in translation -- by poets past and present from Homer and Sappho to Lorca, Snyder, and Ashbery. Each selection is accompanied by an illuminating explanatory note designed to complement and clarify the text.

    In this book, Kenneth Koch's genius for making poetry clear and for bringing out its real pleasures is everywhere apparent.

    Customer Reviews:

    4 out of 5 stars Good book for writers.......2003-05-24

    This is excellent for beginning readers and writers of poetry. In the essays at the beginning, Koch is successful at convincing the reader that poetry is not as hard as we make it out to be. If we relax and don't allow ourselves to be intimidated, we can enjoy poetry. The rest of the book is devoted to groups of poems, each by one poet, thereby allowing the reader to get to know writers' styles. At the end of each section is a poetry writing exercise asking the reader to write a poem in the style they have just read. These are excellent exercises for broadening anyone's writing; they have certainly broadend my own writing. The only criticism that I have of the book is that the poets included are mostly men. I would think that it could have been more inclusive of women, especially the confessional poets such as Plath whose style new poets may grasp. Overall, this is a great book for teachers, writers, and readers.

    4 out of 5 stars Good book for writers.......2003-05-24

    This is an excellent book for beginning readers and writers of poetry. Koch introduces the reader to poetry as an art form that can be accessible if one does not make it too hard; he makes poetry less intimidating, more comfortable. He tries to explain how we can understand it without feeling stupid. Then, he groups poems by poet so that the reader can get to know each poet's style. Finally, each section is followed by an exercise directing the reader to write in a given poet's style. I have found the exercises thought provoking; they have broadened my own writing. My only criticism is that most of the great poets represented are men. The same could certainly be done and very successfully with more women poets, especially the confessional poets such as Plath. Overall, a great book for teachers, for writers, and for those who would like to know more about poetry but who need some convincing.

    5 out of 5 stars 4.7 stars : Something of a gem!.......2003-04-04

    Am daunted, in the task of writing a review, by the fact that the previous reviewers all got it exactly right! The late Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), whimsical poet, teacher, and enthusiast for the evangel of poetry here gives us a book ideally suited for any poet or reader from high-schooler to nonagenarian.

    The first 135 pages of the book are something of an instruction manual, or an explanation of why poetry seems so strange at first. He patiently explains the obvious : sound matters as much as sense; words have musical value; there is a "poetry language" -- or perhaps several poetry languages? -- that we discover through reading anything & everything in sight. He comes up with the happy comparison of poetry as language being put through a synthesizer!

    He speaks of the need to build up a "poetry base" through much exposure to the poems of the past and present; he "opens up" the Wallace Stevens poem "Anecdote of the Jar" and makes enchanting a poem that irritated me on previous readings; he makes apposite remarks on revision and inspiration ...

    The latter half of the book is a neat -- but not quite comprehensive, as Koch himself admits -- anthology of poetry from across the globe, & encompassing three millennia. From Li Po (Li Bai) to Lorca, from Sappho to Snyder, from Ovid to O'Hara. Senghor and Cesaire are alongside Ashbery and Wallace Stevens. Marvell and Shakespeare, Whitman and Hopkins and several in between, before and after. Most of the poems are suffixed by a comment by Koch of less than a page (except for Keats's "Bright Star" which he allows to shine by itself!). Especially good, I thought, his brief note on the sonnet by George Herbert, "Prayer," which I have been trying of late to memorize.

    Excellent reading for the train, the waiting room, the bed, or whatever region of the house you call your workshop or study!!

    5 out of 5 stars For writing, not just reading poetry........2003-01-31

    A superb introduction to the world of poetry. For my money, it does the best job of describing exactly what poetry is and how it's different from other forms of writing. Poetry is a language within a language and the essential element of this language is music. Meter and rhyme, similies and metaphors, these and other tools available to a poet are all about creating music and music is what makes a poem sing. All writing advice boils down to read a lot and write a lot. This book makes both tasks easier.

    5 out of 5 stars Modern poetry in accessible form.......2002-11-22

    This poem brings a sophisticated contemporary sensibility to poetry in a wholly non-threatening way. Koch writes in a way a child could understand, yet his choice of poetic texts is refreshing. None of the standard Sandburg and Frost stuff that turns intelligent children (and adults) off from poetry.

    There are some great comments about little-known poets like Joseph Ceravolo.
    Talking to the Sun: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems for Young People
    Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    • very good book for kids
    • A charming anthology
    • I loved this book
    • Book of Poems for Children
    		 Talking to the Sun: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems for Young People
    Kenneth Koch , and Kate Farrell
    Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Hardcover

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    Similar Items:
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    ASIN: 0805001441

    Book Description

    Published in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    Customer Reviews:

    5 out of 5 stars very good book for kids.......2006-04-11

    As a father, poet and art fan, I think this book makes a brilliant gift for artistically inclined children. The art graphics and choices are excellent. The poems are excellent. Most importantly, the book doesn't condescend to intuitive children. Koch understands that kids don't crave excessively sentimental hooey. They like to be fascinated. This is the kind of book that, over time, will increase a child's creativity.

    4 out of 5 stars A charming anthology.......2004-12-11

    This is a book of poetry and art. The poems are good for adults as well as children (even though this is called anthology for "young people"). They are arranged loosely by theme and are from different time periods.

    There are also many pictures throughout the book. These are color and are reproductions of art from different time periods and cultures. The pictures and poems are arranged to fill each page. This makes for a charming book to browse.

    This is not an essential book for a family library. It is a nice edition and has a good collection of poems for all ages displayed attractively with pictures. Depending on what you already have and how much space you have this might be a nice edition for you.

    5 out of 5 stars I loved this book.......2002-12-18

    I am 25 now, but I was given this book as a child, and I loved it. It is filled with lavish art and short poems that are meaningful and interesting to children as well as adults.

    A great book to give a child as a first exposure to poetry.

    5 out of 5 stars Book of Poems for Children.......2000-05-17

    This is a beautiful book. The illustration used with the poems were splendid. The artwork presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art were simple breathtaking. I would love to visit that museum oneday. This book is perfect for introducing children to all types of poetry.

    Authors:

    1. Kogawa, Joy
    2. Yusef Komunyakaa
    3. Hans Koning
    4. Dean R. Koontz
    5. Janusz Korczak
    6. Gordon Korman
    7. Jerzy Kosinski
    8. Myrna Kostash
    9. Maryann Kovalski
    10. Karl Kraus

    Authors

    Authors