Season on Earth Book

A fascinating and strange book containing two massive, epic poems as well as a long introductory poem about the author's relationship to the works.

He wrote "Ko" () in his thirties, them returned to the work with a sort-of sequel, "The Duplications" () about ten or so years later, and then wrote the introductory piece another ten or so years later.

All three are amazing takes on epic poems, in the vein of "Orlando Furioso" and Byron's "Don Juan." They follow the ottava rima structure, and comically digressive and surreal narrative flow.

I read a couple of interviews with Koch where he said he'd intended to to write epics that were 'all incident, no reflection' (or something like that), and also wanted to invoke the tone of Mack Sennett's films.

They are definitely odd poems/narratives, jumping in time and space, with many strange characters and mythic, surreal events. I think the two later pieces tried to bring in more reflection. It's hard to discern a clear-cut, simple point to it all, beyond the wild fun the author seems to have in wordplay and following his imagination wherever it goes--and that's more than enough.