One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays

by Kenneth Koch

Brief plays and skits deal with imperial and modern China, seventeenth century Spain, costume history, philosophy, and historical change

Genres: Plays, Poetry, Drama

180 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 1988

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

[Josiah Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

These flash plays span the global map and the map of history. From the far east to the fictional lands of Hades, these plays characterize historical figures and fictional figures as they struggle with their time and settings they are placed in with the characters they are placed with. These brief glimpses of humanity show us where we are, where we've been and where we're going. With such compassion in such brief pieces of dialogue, the beauty of language comes to life. Must read play is Glory, or The Anthology of which we could all relate. Poetry and Play working together to make such relevant art.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Put everything into a blender — history, humor, hoodoo — and pour into a page of stage directions, season shortly and enjoy.