Quotes by Kenneth Koch

About Kenneth Koch:

Kenneth Koch was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77. He was a prominent poet of the New York School of poetry, a loose group of poets including Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery that eschewed contemporary introspective poetry in favor of an exuberant, cosmopolitan style that drew major inspiration from travel, painting, and music.
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Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

Kenneth Koch

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

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

I never thought of myself as a New York poet or as an American poet.

Kenneth Koch

It seems everything is so full of possibilities one can hardly take it all in.

Kenneth Koch

Once I start writing about something, it goes off rather fast, and sometimes details which might be interesting such as what the room looked like or what somebody said that was not exactly on the same subject tend to get lost.

Kenneth Koch

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

Kenneth Koch

It's a well known thing that ordinary perceptions can have a strange aspect when one is travelling.

Kenneth Koch

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Kenneth Koch

I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.

Kenneth Koch

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

I certainly have the feeling that I'm the same person even though I've changed a great deal.

Kenneth Koch

It's enormously cheering to get a good review by someone who seems to understand your work.

Kenneth Koch

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.

Kenneth Koch

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

Kenneth Koch

Maybe there are three or four really good poets in a generation.

Kenneth Koch

I love painting and music, of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didn't read it until I was in my late 20s.

Kenneth Koch

Politics is there the way men and women are there, the way the Atlantic Ocean is there. Sometimes I've written about politics specifically, I mean about politics as it's understood on television and in newspapers.

Kenneth Koch

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

It takes a long time to publish a book.

Kenneth Koch

Author Bio

  • NameKenneth Koch
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • BornFebruary 27, 1925
  • DiedJuly 6, 2002
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Screenwriter
  • AwardsBollingen Prize