Dr. Fun (Page 2)

And just when you think you want to stop the ride and get off, Koch chimes in with a revelation so sweet and so calm that you stay on. "I want spring, I want to turn like a mobile/In a new fresh air!" he wrote in an early poem called "Desire for Spring." "O breeze, my lovely, come in, that I mayn't be stultified!"

Above all else, Koch was a poet of charm. He was so mesmerized by the world that no one can fail to be enchanted by his vision of it, not least because it rarely comes without a good dose of irony and appreciation for just how ridiculous the position of the "artist" can be if it goes to your head. While he took his practice very seriously, and spent many years teaching poetry and the value of artistic expression in venues from nursing homes to elementary schools, Koch never gave up on the idea that verse is based, ultimately, on life. In a tiny poem called "AESTHETICS OF BEING GLORIOUS," he argued, simply, for the pleasures of beginning from one's rightfully earthbound spot: "To be glorious, take off your wings/Before you fly." In a series of poems called "In Bed" that explore, with varying degrees of sobriety, the role of this central piece of furniture to human existence, he wrote first a one-liner called "BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN BED": "Why I am happy to be here." He followed it up with a singular, deeply comic contribution to the genre of worshiping one's lady love that reminds us how silly such flights of romantic fancy can be. Marvell has nothing on the jovial spoof "OTHER POETRY BED": "Shall I compare you to a summer's bed?/You are more beautiful."

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Koch was more than a poet of comic verse, a label that dogged him throughout his life. At its best, his work captures the deep pleasures of being alive and of being fully conscious of one's own luck. There is a gentleness to his joy that in no way diminishes its force, a rare combination that reverberates in anyone fortunate enough to be open to it in all its possibility. Here is Koch, in "To My Heart at the Close of Day":

At dusk light you come to bat
As Georg Trakl might put it. How are you doing
Aside from that, aside from the fact
That you are at bat? What balls are you going to hit
Into the outfield, what runs will you score,
And do you think you ever will, eventually
Bat one out of the park? That would be a thrill
To you and your contemporaries! Your mighty posture
Takes its stand in my chest and swing swing swing
You warm up, then you take a great step
Forward as the ball comes smashing toward you, home
Plate. And suddenly it is evening.

How mournful to lose such a wellspring of loving energy. O baseball! O balmy nights! O Kenneth Koch!

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