New Addresses

Rating:
Summary: Koch's Best
Review: Easily Koch's best book -- and that is saying a lot.

All the poems here are written as direct address -- the "you" in each poem is an inanimate object, place, thing, or event...allowing the poet to write deeply and freely about the important events in his life. In the end, you realize it is a kind of autobiography.

"New Addresses" is moving, connected, funny, adventurous, experimental, free. It's a huge success. You should read it.

Rating:
Summary: Vibrant and good humored
Review: These poems are so witty and easily read that I almost made the mistake missing their depth or emotional resonance. It is only on the second or third reading of a poem like "To My Twenties" that a phrase like "What you gave me you gave me whole/But as for telling/Me how best to use it/You weren't a genius at that" did I really see the breezyness of that style emulates the ease with which those years in someone's life can fly by. I was moved.