Associated with the New York School of poetry, Kenneth Koch wrote nearly twenty collections of poetry over his lifetime, including Straits (1998), On the Great Atlantic Railway: Selected Poems 1950-88 (1994), and The Art of Love (1975).  He also wrote several plays and books teaching young children about writing poetry.  Among the numerous honors Koch received are the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, awarded by the Library of Congress in 1996, as well as awards from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Ingram-Merrill foundations.  He was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996.  He died from leukemia in 2002.