Kenneth Koch Quotes

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.

You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts - in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms.

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

I want to be a poet and have a chance to explore that and let people know what's really on my mind.

There are two types of poets: People who write poetically about their lives, and poets that live poetically and write about it.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

When you write a song, a song has longevity.

I write hate lyrics really well. It's not every day you can use them, really.

I like to write poetry.

Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul.

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

Poetry isn't an activity, it's a way life is lived.

A poet's work consists less in seeking words for his ideas than in seeking ideas for his words and predominant rhythms.

I try to give my work everything I've got, because when you're dead or you're out of the business or you're in an old actors' home somewhere, if you've done a good job, your work will still be 16 years old and dancing and healthy and pirouetting and arabesquing all over the place. And they'll say, "That's who he is! He's not this decaying skeleton."

poetry is first of all a way of life and only secondarily a way of writing.

Poetry is the renewal of words, setting them free, and that's what a poet is doing: loosening the words.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

poetry is where the language is renewed.

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns; it's far more difficult to match firm words than armies, they're disciplined troops, unconquered, to be placed in rhythm, the mind's most mighty foe, and not disperse in air. I'd give, believe me, a whole land for one good song, for I know well that only words, that words alone, like the high mountains, have no fear of age or death.

Poetry makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don't mean that everyone can write poetry - it's an art, a craft, it requires enormous commitment like any art. But there's a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It's the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.

Poetry is a break for freedom.