Snorting Koch

Wednesday night was the Koch launch at the Poetry Project. Ron Padgett kicked it off by reading the excellent "To Jewishness," accentuated by Ron's own non-Jewishness. Anne Waldman read "Sleep With Women," which is very very insistent about sleeping with women, which was maybe because Schuyler and O'Hara and Ashbery were gay and Kenneth Koch wanted emphatically to be clear about his hetero-ness. Philip Lopate took the stage and said, "I miss Kenneth." And then he read "To World War II." Lots of people read from New Addresses. David Shapiro, the Woody Allen of New York poets, told about a zillion anecdotes and I imagine he'd have stayed up there for three hours had it been allowed; but he was sweet. Paul Violi read, and Mark Halliday, and Kenneth's daughter Katherine and Kenneth's widow Karen. Nice hearing Koch's work in all those different voices.

Nice visit beforehand with Kim, and she and I and a couple of her New Orleans friends went to the reception thingie after the reading.

The afternoon: a visit to Museo El Barrio and the Jewish Museum. More on those later I'm too tired right now.

Sleepy sleep sleep sleepishness.

Over and out.