dumbfoundry

Yet it quickly becomes apparent to a reader of his collected works that the most notable quality of Koch's lifetime of poetry is not jokiness but lyricism - a Whitman-like enthusiasm for cataloging sensual experience. Many of his poems, like Whitman's, include litanies and lists, as in "Faces," where Koch writes: "The face of the clouds; / The face of the targets when all the arrows are sticking out of them, like tongues; / The face of insects; the tiny black mustachioed ineptitude of a fly . . . / The face of Popeye; the face of Agamemnon; the face of Ruth in the Bible; the face of Georges Simenon." "In Bed" strings together teeny poems from "My Intoxication In Bed" to the one-liner "The Holidays of Bed" ("Are when no one is there"). [...]

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