Kenneth Koch > Quotes

“You have enchanted me
with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language”
― Kenneth Koch

“I wasn’t ready
For you.

I understood nothing
Seemingly except my feelings
You were whirling
In your life
I was keeping
Everything in my head

"To Marina”
― 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

“Do not be defeated by the
Feeling that there is too much for you to know. That
is a myth of the oppressor. You are
Capable of understanding life. And it is yours alone.
And only this time.”
― Kenneth Koch, The Art of Love: Poems

“I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut / That will solve a murder case unsolved for years / Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window / Through which he saw her head, connecting with / Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red /Roof in her heart. For this we lived a thousand years; / For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not /Inside a bottle, thank goodness!

----- from "To You”
― Kenneth Koch

“Maybe poetry took the life out of both of them,
Idea and friendship.”
― Kenneth Koch

“AESTHETICS OF INTEGRITY

For every star in the sky
Someone is holding his ground.”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“Lies belong in poems”
― Kenneth Koch, Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry

“I probably misunderstand misunderstanding itself”
― Kenneth Koch

“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

“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

“AESTHETICS OF THE AESTHETICIAN

What is the aesthetician
But a mule hitched to the times?”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time.”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“I don't know where you'd find such a magazine." ~ on the stipulations set by a benefactor to the Harvard Advocate that the staff contain no Jews, homosexuals, or drunks”
― Kenneth Koch

“Write poetry as if you were in love. If you are always in love you will not always write the same poem, but if you are never in love, you may.

- from "My Olivetti Speaks”
― Kenneth Koch

“Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.” /
The yellow hobbyhorse rocks to and fro, and from the chimney / Drops the Strangler! The white and pink roses are slightly agitated by the struggle, / But afterwards beside the dead “poet” they cuddle up comfortingly against their vase. They are safer now, no one will compare them to the sea. /

Here on the railroad train, one more time, is the Strangler. / He is going to get that one there, who is on his way to a poetry reading. / Agh! Biff! A body falls to the moving floor.”
― Kenneth Koch

“AESTHETICS OF OPERA

Don’t sing an aria
To someone who can’t
Sing one back.”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“A basso sings, and a soprano answers him.
Then there is thunder in a clear blue sky,
And, from the earth, a sigh: “This song is finished.”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“What I want you to do for me is this:
I want to understand certain things and tell them to others.
To do it, I have to get them right, so they are hard to resist.
Stay with me until I can do this.

Afterwards, you can go where you want.”
― 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

“AESTHETICS OF COMEDY ASLEEP

Don’t wake the clown
Or he may knock you down.”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“AESTHETICS OF AVANT-GARDE THEATRE

Make the stage an actor
Make an actor the stage.”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“Isn't this history, and aren't we a couple of ruins?
Is Carthage Pompeii? is the pillow the bed? is the sun
What glues our heads together? O midnight! O midnight!”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems

“The very existence of poetry should make us laugh. What is that all about? What is it for?”
― Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch

“Where did you come from, lamentable quality?
Before I had a life you were about to ruin my life.
The mystery of this stays with me.
“Don’t brood about things,” my elders said.
I hadn’t any other experience of enemies from inside.
They were all from outside—big boys
Who cursed me and hit me; motorists; falling trees.
All these you were as bad as, yet inside. When I spoke, you were there.
I could avoid you by singing or acting.
I acted in school plays but was no good at singing.
Immediately after the play you were there again.
You ruined the cast party.
You were not a sign of confidence.
You were not a sign of manliness.
You were stronger than good luck and bad; you survived them both.
You were slowly edged out of my throat by psychoanalysis
You who had been brought in, it seems, like a hired thug
To beat up both sides and distract them
From the main issue: oedipal love. You were horrible!
Tell them, now that you’re back in your thug country,
That you don’t have to be so rough next time you’re called in
But can be milder and have the same effect—unhappiness and pain.”
― Kenneth Koch

“The uniform of the gladdest malt is its sureness.”
― Kenneth Koch