Pursuing a Gray-Haired Muse

Kenneth Koch, 52, a bespectacled, bushy-haired poet and English professor at Columbia, has a peculiar knack of finding poets in unlikely places. In 1968, for example, he whisked into Manhattan's P.S. 61 and, before they could say "Charlie Brown," had sixth-graders versifying about their favorite heroes and fantasies. The result was Wishes, Lies and Dreams, an anthology of the students' poems and a how-to guide for teaching poetry to the young.

Last spring Koch decided to approach another generally ignored group of poetic prospects--the old. He believed that older people have rich and unexpressed fantasy lives. But even Koch feared that the task would prove too difficult when he saw his first class at the American Nursing Home on Manhattan's grimy Lower East Side. There were about 25 students, most of them arriving slowly in wheelchairs and looking, as Koch recalls, "old, sick, tired, uncomfortable." Many were blind or hard of hearing, and some seemed to be asleep or in pain. Recalls Koch: "For four or five weeks some would say 'I can't remember,' or 'I haven't got anything to say.' "

Yet gradually they responded. I Never Told Anybody (Random House; $8.95) is a collection of the patients' poems and Koch's highly readable account of how he coaxed his students along. Since most of them had worked as domestic or blue-collar workers and had little knowledge of poetry, Koch started with the same introductory techniques that he had tried in the children's classroom. He de-emphasized rhyme and meter, encouraged repetition of words and phrases ("a slight artificiality to teach them to put things together in a new way," says Koch). He always suggested themes, like growing old or silence or the color green. Assisted by Kate Farrell, a young poet and student at Columbia, Koch had each of the dictated poems transcribed. Each of the 16 sessions ended with Koch reading aloud and praising the day's work.

Sea Shells. Thus encouraged, the group moved from an initial prosy, collective poem to individual efforts inspired by music ("The doctor almost gave me up/ Till I heard that music/ Then I started to move") and touched objects ("This powder puff makes me think of your hair"). For one workshop, Koch and Farrell brought sea shells, seaweed and bags of sand to elicit sea poems ("I, the ocean/ So huge/ So powerful/ So rich"). Says Koch of his props: "The residents lived in such a deprived environment that if you brought in anything, they'd be inspired." By the final workshops, the students had progressed to more subtle subjects, such as their secret dreams and memories ("I never told anybody the things I used to do at school/ But I'm telling them now").

Koch, who thinks that the group's poems were "wonderful," hopes that his book will prompt other workshops in other homes--and not just as therapeutic busywork. Argues Koch: "As therapy it may help someone to be a busy old person, but as art and accomplishment it can help him to be fully alive. It was cheering to find such a lot of life and strength in the nursing home. I hadn't known that there was so much passion and wit."

And what of his erstwhile students? Sam Rainey, 62, not very old but missing a leg and confined to a wheelchair, is still writing poems in classes now led by Recreation Director Barbara Mittelmark. Says he: "Poetry--it just comes to you." Ex-Housekeeper Mary L. Jackson is also still writing at 93--"a long story but a good story." Both of them are proudly awaiting small royalty checks from Koch's publisher for their achievements.

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