On the Great Atlantic Rainway: Selected Poems 1950-1988

by Kenneth Koch

On the Great Atlantic Railway is Kenneth's Koch's inspired collection of 32 years of work. Koch, David Lehman said in The American Poetry Review, is "a masterly innovator . . . who has used his extravagant powers of wit and invention to enlarge the sphere of the poetic . . . he has stretched our ideas of what it is possible to do in poetry."

Genres: Poetry

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Kenneth Koch is most often recognized as one of the four most prominent poets of the 1950s-1960s poetic movement "the New York School of Poetry" along with Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery and James Schuyler. The New York School adopted the avant-garde movement in a style often called the "new" avant-garde, drawing on Abstract Expressionism, French surrealism and stream-of-consciousness writing in the attempt to create a fresh genre free from cliché. In his anthology The New York Poets, Mark Ford writes, "In their reaction against the serious, ironic, ostentatiously well-made lyric that dominated the post-war poetry scene, they turned to the work of an eclectic range of literary iconoclasts, eccentrics and experimenters."

Fiercely anti-academic and anti-establishment, Koch's attitude and aesthetic were dubbed by John Ashbery his "missionary zeal." Ford calls him "the New York School poet most ready to engage in polemic with the poetic establishment, and the one most determined to promote the work of himself and his friends to a wider audience." Koch died of leukemia at age 77, leaving a legacy of numerous anthologies of both short and long poems, avant-garde plays and short stories, in addition to nonfiction works dealing with aesthetics and teaching poetry to children and senior citizens.

Reviews

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hefty selection of the inimitable Koch’s work, these poems are exuberant, romantic, boisterous, and sometimes downright bonkers; they are also, as the later offerings demonstrate, acts of remarkably brave self-interrogation.

[Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obviously not as comprehensive as the collected, but I stole this from a bookstore where I used to work by stuffing it down the front of my overalls (yes, I wore them; it was the '90s), and when I open it I feel a rush of nostalgia and affection for the writer that I rarely get with books I paid cash money for.

[Donna Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a copy that Simic gave me that he marked all the pages up with his thoughts. Koch is very sensual and kalidescopic. He is a gorgeous writer.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Koch is highly overrated, but this is a good collection.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could, I'd give this a 4.5.

[Susan]

Finalist for Pulitzer in 1995 (with One Train)

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I carried this book everywhere for years.