Kenneth Koch: On Aesthetics

Kenneth Koch
(1925-2002)

Kenneth Koch (1925-2002):
"On Aesthetics"
from One Train (1994)

Kenneth Koch was my freshman English Professor at Columbia School of Engineering (Fall 1959). It was also his first year at Columbia, and his first book Ko, or a Season on Earth (1959) was just published. He never mentioned that he was a poet, or spoke of his friends Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and the artist Larry Rivers. None of the students realized how lucky we were in having a blossoming poet teaching us. He gave the class an assignment to memorize "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas. I recall it was the hardest homework for me that year, more so than any chemistry, math, or physics problem sets. I attended my first poetry reading at Cornell (1964) when Koch read Ko and Thank You and Other Poems at Willard Straight Hall, the student's union. I just said "Hello" to him after his reading as my mind was occupied with my graduate course work in preparation for my doctoral exam in Molecular Biology. Koch started the Poetry in the Schools Program in New York City. His books Wishes, Lies, and Dreams (1970) and Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? (1973) provided a blueprint in teaching children to write poetry across America. It inspired me to get involved in CPITS (California-Poets-in-the-Schools), and I enjoyed sharing my excitement of poetry with the kids in the classroom. When Koch gave a reading at San Jose State University (1990), he autographed these books for me, inscribing "To Peter— my former student". One of my poems "Valentine Mints" in the CPITS 1995 Anthology was selected by the San Francisco Arts Waterfront Project (1999) and cast in bronze near the Ferry Building. I'm sure that Koch would have enjoyed it and regret that I've never mentioned it to him. For this Anthology, I'm including 15 of the 95 short poems in "On Aesthetics", the last poem from One Train (1994). These sketches have a Zen-like quality that is humorous and refreshing. The # numbering are my own as they are not in the Koch original poem "On Aesthetics". The lines in Koch's "Aesthetics of Cézanne"— "the apples / that were in / the orchard / so red / and so gold" is echoing William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say"— "the plums / that were in / the icebox... / so sweet / and so cold".
(Peter Y. Chou)

On Aesthetics (1994)

#5 AESTHETICS OF THE MAN IN THE MOON

To be the man in the moon
You have to be sunny.

#6 AESTHETICS OF CREATING LIGHT

Put one hand
Next to a light-switch,
With the other hand
Feeling for the wall.

#12 AESTHETICS OF PAUL VALÉRY

Better a single line that I have worked on
Than a whole epic dictated by the Muse!
Better to walk, even lost, in my own direction— and find the way.
If not... not count the day.

#13 AESTHETICS OF BEING A SAILBOAT

Go this way and that
Have a reflection
Be upside down

#20 AESTHETICS OF WAKING UP

Close one eye
After the other.
Whisper "Good-bye!"
To the Unconscious.

#31 AESTHETICS OF CREATING TIME

To create time
Relinquish space— that is, the place
Where the time used to be.

#36 AESTHETICS OF CÉZANNE

To have painted
the apples
that were in
the orchard
so red
and so gold.

#44 AESTHETICS OF DANTE

Invite your best friends
To go out with you in a boat
That's magic and can go anywhere
And sail and talk, and talk and sail,
Until you find Beatrice
Like an endangered species
With luminous antlers
Rising through the Medieval dark.

#46 AESTHETICS OF CREATING SOMETHING

This doesn't just happen:
It happens to you.

#53 AESTHETICS OF THE NOVEL

Put one plot
Inside another.

#55 AESTHETICS OF FEELING FINE

Feel fine
Then go away.

#68 AESTHETICS OF INTEGRITY

For every star in the sky
Someone is holding his ground.

#79 AESTHETICS OF SILENCE

Silence is not everything.
It is half of everything
Like a house.

#93 AESTHETICS OF BEING GLORIOUS

To be glorious, take off your wings
Before you fly.

#94 AESTHETICS OF STONE

The gods take stone
And turn it into men and women;
Men and women take gods
And turn them into stone.

— Kenneth Koch (1925-2002),
   "On Aesthetics"
   from One Train
   Knopf, New York, 1994, pp. 55-74

• A Tribute to Kenneth Koch
(20 poets on Kenneth Koch from Jacket 15, December 2001)
• Kenneth Koch: The Pleasure of Peace
(Selections from The Pleasure of Peace and Other Poems, 1969)
• 'The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch': Urban Appetites
(Review by Emily Nussbaum, New York Times, Dec. 11, 2005)
• Kenneth Koch, 77, Poet of New York School, Dies
(By Alan Feuer, New York Times, July 7, 2002)
• Excerpt from Rose, Where Did You Get That Red
(Teaching kids to write poetry in the New York City schools)
• Academy of American Poets: Kenneth Koch
(Biography, Poems, Related Prose, Selected Bibliography)