One Thousand Avant-Garde Plays - Softcover

Koch, Kenneth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394758978 ISBN 13: 9780394758978

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988

Synopsis

Brief plays and skits deal with imperial and modern China, seventeenth century Spain, costume history, philosophy, and historical change

About this title

About the Author

Kenneth Koch has published many volumes of poetry, including New Addresses, Straits and One Train. He was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1995, in 1996 he received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry awarded by the Library of Congress, and he received the first Phi Beta Kappa Poetry award in November of 2001. His short plays, many of them produced off- and off-off-Broadway, are collected in The Gold Standard: A Book of Plays. He has also written several books about poetry, including Wishes, Lies, and Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and, most recently, Making Your Own Days: The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. He taught undergraduates at Columbia University for many years. He passed away in 2002.

From Library Journal

$8.95. poetry Fear not; there are really only 116 plays (or playlets) hererunning from two lines to four pagesand though some academics might ponder the implications of, for example, Hamlet, Michelangelo, and Wittgenstein declaiming on stage together, the intent is decidedly playful. An imp among poets, Koch casts animals, gods, concepts, continents, and painters in lead roles. A man dressed as a shark battles the French army in Africa. Cezanne sings gospel. A speck of foam cries out in the Bay of Naples. These surreal tidbits have some witty moments, but pieces such as "Olive Oyl Commandeers Popeye's Gunboat and Sails Off to Attack Russia" seem like transcripts from a five-year-old's pre-bedtime monologue. A mixed bag of comic diversions and arty one-liners. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394758978
• ISBN 13: 9780394758978
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180