What do you think?
Rate this book
The Art of the Possible!: Comics Mainly Without Pictures
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 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 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 "A phenomenon is isolated called 'Global Charming.' Here's what it Life on earth becomes more and more delightful," and The Art of the Possible is our best evidence of that assertion.
The Art of the 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 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 "A phenomenon is isolated called 'Global Charming.' Here's what it Life on earth becomes more and more delightful," and The Art of the Possible is our best evidence of that assertion.
- GenresPoetry
132 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2004
About the author
Kenneth Koch
111 books89 followersKenneth 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 1, 2009
A conceptual book designed partly as an homage to the comic strips of days gone by, The Art of the Possible demonstrates - or attempts to demonstrate - how the world of reality confounds where the realm of artistry and poetry liberate.
Kenneth Koch, known more for his (relatively) mainstream poetry than for his draftsmanship, has created a book wherein poems bleed together even after the page stops. He looks at Brer Fox in Disneyland ("The Brer Facts are These / Brer Fox / May Not be a Fox at All / But a Man Walt Disney Dreamed Up Long Ago / In a Different Time"), Mao Tse Tung, and Virgil Thompson - all without actually rendering any of these characters further than, at most, a rudimentary silhouette representing the character.
This is simply a book of poetry formatted in underground comics form.
To deem a poem arbitrarily "good" or "bad" would do any poet or writer an injustice. Instead, it becomes necessary to study the form of these poems - or, does the innovative format help or hinder the work? In many senses, it does both - and neither. The primitive artwork dissects the page, serving as a visual representative of something but not so closely as to be instantly recognizable. In fact, in places, Koch himself seems to be playing with his apparent artistic ineptitude (for instance, in the "Kenya Comics" sequences - the outline of a blocky elephant with trunk upraised serves also as a crude sketch of a man with right arm held as if being sworn in during trial). The format distracts, and yet the poems themselves would not exist in any other way - at least, not without undergoing vast adaptation.
Also, it is impossible to accept the book without having some knowledge of Koch's background, and capabilities, as a poet and instructor. As bizarre and unskilled The Art of the Possible may seem to the outside observer, it represents Koch's ideology that poetry ought to be engaging and all-encompassing, that it ought not isolate itself from such low-brow forms of artistry as comics, for example. Koch himself was viewed as a threat by at least one group, the flamboyant anti-art collaboration "Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers," when a late-1960s poetry reading was forcefully interrupted by a member of this group who fired a shot at Koch (which, fortunately, turned out to be a blank).
The Art of the Possible is a display of what poetry can be... but it remains difficult to look past the presentation of the material to see the content therein. Perhaps time will present alternate takes of a similar theme, thereby making Koch more of a pioneer than an "outside artist" within a concept of his own invention. As it stands, the book is more of an anomaly than an outré fusion of both comics and poetry.
Kenneth Koch, known more for his (relatively) mainstream poetry than for his draftsmanship, has created a book wherein poems bleed together even after the page stops. He looks at Brer Fox in Disneyland ("The Brer Facts are These / Brer Fox / May Not be a Fox at All / But a Man Walt Disney Dreamed Up Long Ago / In a Different Time"), Mao Tse Tung, and Virgil Thompson - all without actually rendering any of these characters further than, at most, a rudimentary silhouette representing the character.
This is simply a book of poetry formatted in underground comics form.
To deem a poem arbitrarily "good" or "bad" would do any poet or writer an injustice. Instead, it becomes necessary to study the form of these poems - or, does the innovative format help or hinder the work? In many senses, it does both - and neither. The primitive artwork dissects the page, serving as a visual representative of something but not so closely as to be instantly recognizable. In fact, in places, Koch himself seems to be playing with his apparent artistic ineptitude (for instance, in the "Kenya Comics" sequences - the outline of a blocky elephant with trunk upraised serves also as a crude sketch of a man with right arm held as if being sworn in during trial). The format distracts, and yet the poems themselves would not exist in any other way - at least, not without undergoing vast adaptation.
Also, it is impossible to accept the book without having some knowledge of Koch's background, and capabilities, as a poet and instructor. As bizarre and unskilled The Art of the Possible may seem to the outside observer, it represents Koch's ideology that poetry ought to be engaging and all-encompassing, that it ought not isolate itself from such low-brow forms of artistry as comics, for example. Koch himself was viewed as a threat by at least one group, the flamboyant anti-art collaboration "Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers," when a late-1960s poetry reading was forcefully interrupted by a member of this group who fired a shot at Koch (which, fortunately, turned out to be a blank).
The Art of the Possible is a display of what poetry can be... but it remains difficult to look past the presentation of the material to see the content therein. Perhaps time will present alternate takes of a similar theme, thereby making Koch more of a pioneer than an "outside artist" within a concept of his own invention. As it stands, the book is more of an anomaly than an outré fusion of both comics and poetry.
January 11, 2008
Koch’s comic book verse is entertaining, but not brilliant. The title poem and the closing poem are the book’s best. “The Art of the Possible/ Credo: / Vanishing is impossible / Lasting is impossible / Being in two places at once / is impossible / Instantly knowing Spanish is impossible / Living in the midst of ten thousand / panes of glass is impossible / Being simultaneously masked / And unmasked is impossible / Except in art / Art is the art of the possible.” And: “Global Charming Comics / A phenomenon / is isolated / called ‘Global / Charming’ // Here’s what / it means: / Every day / in every / way // Life on / Earth becomes / more and more / delightful // This is hard to believe // Nonethe-/ less, if / it is a / fact, it / is a / fact / To Be Continued…” The poems are rendered in comic book lettering, are doodled in boxes and decorated with squiggles and line drawings. Two paired, vertically curved lines, enormous open parentheses, shape the poem called Bosom Comics. One open parenthesis contains the words: “Night / After / Night” The other, the words “I / Wait / For You / To Call”. Clever words, clever presentation.
March 15, 2014
It's a neat idea, but the book seems to drag and lean on the concept rather than having poems that can stand on themselves. The synergy of image and text isn't as fruitful as I'd hoped.
June 4, 2015
A must read for anyone interested in poetry comics.
NY Art Magazine's review of the work is well written. http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/?p=2940
NY Art Magazine's review of the work is well written. http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/?p=2940
800-899-literature
April 4, 2019818.5
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews