Kenneth Koch was born in Cincinnati, and after graduating from high school in 1943, he began a three-year tour of army duty, serving as a rifleman in the Pacific. He entered Harvard University after the war and graduated in 1948. He continued his education at Columbia University, receiving his M.A. in 1953 and his Ph.D. in 1959; his dissertation is "The Reception and Influence of American Poetry in France, 1918-1950." While working on his doctorate, Koch taught at Columbia University, Rutgers University, and Brooklyn College. He has been on the Columbia faculty since 1959, becoming a full professor in 1971. He has also directed a poetry workshop at the New School for Social Research since 1958. He married Mary Janice Elwood in 1954, and they have one daughter, Katherine. In 1995 Koch won the Bollingen Prize in Poetry.

Koch wrote poetry as a child, but he says, "I don't think I wrote anything very good...