I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry. Kenneth Koch More Quotes by Kenneth Koch More Quotes From Kenneth Koch All poetry comes from repetition. Kenneth Koch repetition You can't be too influenced by a great poet. You simply have to live through it. Kenneth Koch great-poet poet It takes a long time to publish a book. Kenneth Koch long-time long book As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry. Kenneth Koch defined political littles Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur. Kenneth Koch connoisseur should said I got married, other people went off. We had sort of another public-we were our entire readership for many years, and we were very excited by each other. Kenneth Koch married people years I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them. Kenneth Koch criticism play people Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time. Kenneth Koch all-time written meant-to-be I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My family was not nationally known as being a literary family, though my mother and my mother's side of the family in general were interested in literature. Kenneth Koch cincinnati-ohio literature mother One trouble with a kind of falsely therapeutic and always reassuring attitude that it is easy to fall into with old people, is the tendency to be satisfied with too little. Kenneth Koch maturity attitude fall This rose became a bandanna, which became a house, which became infused with all passion, which became a hideaway, which became yes I would like to have dinner, which became hands, which became lands, shores, beaches, natives on the stones, staring and wild beasts in the trees, chasing the hats of lost hunters, and all this deserves a tone. Kenneth Koch passion beach hands As I look over my work, I mean every time I look over my early work, I see, yes, I could do that then and then I could do that and that... That may be the hardest thing for a writer, at least for a poet, to tell what the identity of his work is. Kenneth Koch identity mean looks I certainly have the feeling that I'm the same person even though I've changed a great deal. Kenneth Koch ive-changed deals feelings Also, I liked John Cage's music. I liked it for its craziness, the use of silence, the boldness-anything to get me away from writing about.. I don't know what academic poets write about. Kenneth Koch cages silence writing Some of the French surrealists at the beginning of the war had come over to New York and they brought out this magazine. It was a big, glossy magazine full of surrealist things. Kenneth Koch new beginning new-york war I was excited by what my painter friends were doing, and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too, and that was a wonderful little, fizzy sort of world. Kenneth Koch doing friends poetry world I was influenced by surrealist poetry and painting as were thousands of other people, and it seems to me to have become a part of the way I write, but it's not. Kenneth Koch me painting poetry people
