Being together so much
and talking so much
and writing poems
and showing them to each other so much
and telling each other what to read so much
and all of that,
we were a little bit,
I suppose, like the members of a team,
like the Yankees or the Minnesota Vikings.
We inspired each other,
we envied each other,
we emulated each other,
we were very critical of each other,
we admired each other,
we were almost entirely dependent on each other for support.
Each had to be better than the others
but if one flopped
we all did.
I’ve loved other writers
but I haven’t known them.
They weren’t there,
at the bar
or in the studio
or on the phone;
they weren’t fellow Vikings,
shoving me around.
(Kenneth Koch, The Art of Poetry, 1996, pp. 213-4).
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Published by Anthony Wilson
I am a lecturer, poet and writing tutor. I work in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter. My anthology Lifesaving Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. In 2012 I published Riddance (Worple Press), a collection of poems, and Love for Now (Impress Books), a memoir, about my experience of cancer. My most recent books are Deck Shoes (Impress Books, 2019), a book of prose memoir and criticism, and The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019). In 2023 I will publish The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, with Blue Diode Press. My current research project, with Sue Dymoke from Nottingham Trent University and funded by the Foyle Foundation, is Young Poets' Stories: https://youngpoetsstories.com/. This blog is archived by the British Library.
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Anthony Wilson 
Anthony, thank you for this…I’ve enjoyed Koch’s poetry for decades (oops, giving away too much?!). Here’s another Koch poem, one of my favorite pieces of advice for writers and other artists: “You Want a Social Life With Friends” http://buoy.antville.org/stories/355406/
All best…Molly
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I did not know this poem of Koch’s. Thank you Molly.
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