Last week, sort of on a whim, I read through the entire text of Kenneth Koch's "Making Your Own Days" early, both the book itself and the accompanying anthology. For a lot of reasons, I think it's probably the best textbook I was assigned this semester--in price, of course (especially to compared to the expensive anthology textbooks that seem to be popular in general), but mainly just in the things it said. I really enjoyed Koch's very personal, genuine appreciation of poetry; there was less focus on interpretation than the processes one goes through to read and enjoy poetry, which can be important even for English majors, who are consistently taught to regard texts as objects of study, apart from enjoyment.
I also appreciate that Koch himself was a (very) accomplished poet, genuinely talented, and also very closely associated with John Ashberry, a favorite of mine (though I think I mentioned in another post that I generally don’t read much poetry, and mainly focus on fiction or philosophy). The way he wrote, just from page to page, always suggested a long “life” lived reading and appreciating poetry, actively enjoying in it and maybe even “reveling” in it—and also, of course, writing it as well.
My only problem with the book—something Koch mentioned himself—is that the anthology noticeably lacked contemporary poetry. This is important because, while appreciating the classics is always good, I wish textbooks would focus more on the people actually writing poetry right now…. which, on the other hand, is something I’ve enjoyed in class, since we’ve read a few very contemporary poets so far.
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