Koch asked in his poem
Fresh Air (1956) why poets were writing about dull subjects with dull forms. Modern poetry was solemn, boring, and uneventful. Koch described poems “Written by the men with their eyes on the myth/ And the missus and the midterms” He attacked the idea that poetry should be in any way stale.
Koch wrote of how:
The Waste Land gave the time’s most accurate data,
It seemed, and Eliot was the Great Dictator
Of literature. One hardly dared to wink
Or fool around in any way in poems,
And critics poured out awful jereboams
To irony, ambiguity, and tension —
And other things I do not wish to mention.
(Excerpt from ‘''''Seasons on Earth'''',’ 1987)
Though not against T. S. Eliot, Koch opposed the idea that in order to write poetry one had to be depressed or think that the world is a terrible place. His ideas were developed with close friends Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, along with painters Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers, among others. He once remarked that “Maybe you can almost characterize the poetry of the New York School as having as one of its main subjects the fullness and richness of life and the richness of possibility and excitement and happiness.” In his poem,
The Art of Poetry (1975), Koch offered guidelines to writing good poetry. Among his 10 suggestions are “1) Is it astonishing?” and “10) Would I be happy to go to Heaven with this pinned on to my angelic jacket as an entrance show? Oh would I?”
Koch once remarked that “Children have a natural talent for writing poetry and anyone who teaches them should know that.” In his poems:
- He mixed word usage with various levels of imagery;
- He set two contrasting tones next to each other, simplicity and silliness at the same time;
- He spoke to everything, animate and inanimate objects;
- He used parody of other poets to express his own views, both serious and comic.
Koch was labeled by some as just a comedic poet. He acknowledged this in an interview and offered his comments:
He gives a picture of this in “To Kidding Around,” where the joys of being a joker are proclaimed:
To be rid of troubles
Of one person by turning into
Someone else, moving and jolting
As if nothing mattered but today
In fact nothing
But this precise moment...
(Excerpt from To Kidding Around, 2000)