Midweek Bonus Post: You May Not Like This

 *Lehman writes…….

when she told him it was ok to allow his anti-social impulses into his poetry…The sensuality and violence that the boy felt he had to repress in his daily life found their way into the stream of consciousness writing he set himself to do.

In one piece he wrote of the urge to “step on a baby’s head because it is so big and round and soft like a balloon, and would go squash under my feet”.

Katherine Lappa remained unflappable. “That’s very good’, she said, “that’s just what you should be feeling – part of what you’re feeling. Keep doing it.” 

Koch would come to regard this as an “instance of the benevolent influence that Freud has had on my life. I was able to enjoy the benefit of a teacher who in Cincinnati in 1942 had undergone psychoanalysis.”

Thanks for delving into the Shadow with me – Nicky Mendenhall



* Adam Phillips in Equals (2002) cites David Lehman’s story about Kenneth Koch’s process of becoming a poet and the help he received from his teacher Katherine Lappa. (pg. 45)