Mr. Koch will not underestimate children. He will not talk down, dumb down, water down, because a passion for the subject matter animates this book as it must animate his instruction. He carefully documents and shares children's work as if it is as important as the poetry that inspired it.

Like anything truly sublime, the unspoken lesson enlivens this book . If you really share what you love with students, guide them instead of showing them, ask instead of telling, and treat their products with the respect you'd give a visiting artist, they will produce art as amazing as Mr. Koch's students did.

Forget teaching poetry to children- teach poetry instead. Take the concept and apply it to all creative acts. Teach art from great and challenging art. Teach music from powerful, sophisticated music. They can not only take it, they'll take it and keep it.

I used this book to introduce unrhymed poetry to a fourth grade class. They just knew that they were going to HATE poetry, but after they were exposed to these poems and had a chance to write their own, they were upset when the poetry unit was over. They loved the poems written by other children that Koch included.

This book was one with which I was taught in high school twenty years ago, and not only did it help me to connect with a personal style, but it also enhanced my appreciation of Whitman and Ginsburg. It stimulated ALL my other classmates in finding a voice and appreciation.

This book contains the hilarious poem "Possible World," a sort of parody of Mallarmé's "Un coup de dés," along with a brilliant memoir and several delightful shorter poems. "The Moor not taken" is also very funny. Buy it together with "Sun Out" to see the very early and the very late Koch side by side.

Koch has followed up his tremendous last collection "New Addresses" with this brilliant collection in which we see the full of range of the powers that made him one of the giants of American poetry - Bell Canto, in Koch's oft-used Ottava Rima, further solidifies his place as a great master of the form.

This is a wonderful book! Koch's work is intelligent, hip and accessible. Everyone I share this book with has enjoyed it. You could purchase a collection that is self serving and boring, but that is not what you get with A Possible World.

Having taught creative writing at the high-school level for almost ten years, I have been acquainted with a multitude of writing textbooks. SLEEPING ON THE WING is the only one which has worked as a whole. In my new course for 2001 entitled simply POETRY, I have used each and every poem collected and exercise designed here by Koch. They work. They're intelligent, focused, and student friendly. This selection of poetry from the modern canon is both challenging and accessible.

Best of all, this anthology is downright fun. Koch's glosses are straightforward and informative, and his exercises doubtlessly grow out of his own lifetime of experience with writing poetry. Since I write along with my classes, I, too, have been wildly pleased with my own poetry production using Koch's exercises.

This is a fine text for the autodidact who wishes to teach her- or himself how to write a poem. However, the energy and zest which flows from a larger group of young poets working together is invaluable as inspiration.

Mr. Koch, you are not simply a stuffy tweed from Columbialand. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and grace.

A wonderful anthology with short, lively pieces chosen especially for young people in high school, but the selection of poems may well delight readers of all ages -- not only beginners! Among the poets represented are not only predictable classics -- Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot -- but also such contemporaries as the post-moderns John Ashbery and Amiri Baraka. The selection of 23 poets -- American, British, European -- has a somewhat urban, playful quality reminiscent of the sixties: Koch is definitely New York School. New York City style or not, though, my colleagues and students upstate have found much here to intrigue them. The editorial comments and creative writing suggestions are especially valuable to teachers who want to make poetry come alive in the classroom. It's also worth noting that the book is well-designed: the poems look good on the page -- they invite the kind of reading and creative response they embody. From the very first poem we read together -- "Disillusionment at Ten O'clock" by Wallace Stevens (beginning "The houses are haunted / By white night-gowns" and ending with "an old sailor" who "Drunk and asleep in his boots / Catches tigers / In red weather") the class was wide awake.

Before reading this book, I suffered from a sort of horror of non-fiction. However, Speaking The Truth in Love is non-threatening, practical, and attainable. The principles shared are deep, loving, and in no way narrow. Given a fair chance, they can be life changing. Encouragement to true assertiveness that respects others as well as yourself is gently but firmly emphasized. The Christian community especially would do well to assimilate its principles into classes, small groups, and requested reading for all potential church leaders. This is a powerful book that deserves a much wider audience than it has yet reached. It is worth every penny I spent and more!

I never really knew I could be assertive. Thanks to this book, I am now lovingly assertive. This book focuses on teaching you to be Christ-like in your assertiveness. It's a must read for anyone who wants to be more Christ-like!!

I am 25 now, but I was given this book as a child, and I loved it. It is filled with lavish art and short poems that are meaningful and interesting to children as well as adults.

A great book to give a child as a first exposure to poetry.

This is a beautiful book. The illustration used with the poems were splendid. The artwork presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art were simple breathtaking. I would love to visit that museum oneday. This book is perfect for introducing children to all types of poetry.

There are those who speak of the "anxiety" of poetry, but there is a case to be made for poetry that results not from agony or a confessional impulse but out of pleasure, the desire to communicate pleasure to an audience hungry for it. Koch generates as much pleasure as any poet, and it is not only the comic value of his poetry that recommends it but the spirit of creativity itself. In "The Art of Poetry" you get a kind of guide to poetics, an "ars poetica" in the Horatian manner with an American accent. You also get "Fresh Air," his memorable 1950s diatribe against academic poetry, still pertinent today. A necessary antidote to the New York Times.

I first encountered Ceravolo almost 6 years ago, after first diving into Celan. The odd conjunction proved more fruitful than one might think. Underneath the green lake's awake surface, tense with linguistic wit and ingenuity (so characteristic of the New York School--for better or worse) is a dark depth that resonates long after the verbal fireworks are ashen. How a genuine and humane sorrow comes draped in such life-tuned language is a marvel no budding poet should miss, and for the poet in full bloom, Ceravolo's voice, like wind, will pollinate from afar. What plants spring up in spring are not narcissus around the lake--this lake, Ceravolo's lake, will be surrounded by flowers that are unique, are his own.

This book was very touching. I loved the writing style and the beautiful poems of the Nursing home residents. It gave great and wonderful insite into their simple present lives and the wild and wonderful lives that they had, in the age, said goodbye to. On reading this book I was struck by Dr. Kenneth Koch's amazing and beautiful way of writing. After finishing the book I wrote the author and received a more that civil reply, I was very surpised and pleased. I would encourage anyone with a desire to learn about poetry and get an insite into people that make their lives in Nursing homes.

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.

I first picked up this book in a bargain bin....I must admit I only liked the cover, that's why I bought it! Later, when I decided to read some of the content, I was dumbfounded! This is a collection of off-the-wall "plays" that can be compared to nothing I've ever read....plays whose main characters are punctuation, or Shakespearean, or from nursery rhymes, and greek myth. This is both a very light and very heavy read, all at the same time...a nice brain tweak!