Playing Games with Kenneth Koch: Poetry, Collaboration, Pedagogy

Abstract

Play and games are of great importance to post–Second World War U.S. avant-garde poetry. Yet their key role has so far gone unrecognized and unexplored due to the neglect of play and game-oriented theoretical frameworks within the field of modern and contemporary poetry and poetics. In this thesis, I use the work of poet and educator Kenneth Koch (1925–2002) to develop a play-oriented framework for poetry criticism. I begin my study by examining how Koch manipulates the tension between free textual play and rule-governed play in order to engage both writer and reader in a variety of open ended poetic games. I then demonstrate how these textual games are also significant at a social level: their transformative dynamics enable Koch to playfully negotiate the aesthetic, personal, and political dichotomies of the second half of the twentieth century. By positioning both the textual and social elements of Koch’s work within this play-oriented framework, I show how composition, reading, collaboration, and pedagogic transmission are all parts of an ongoing process of creative gameplay that continues to shape contemporary poetry.