#poe

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry. ↗

— Michael Tippett

#changed #extra #fascinating #go #into

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

#early #early work #every #every time #hardest

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

#been #certainly #course #fiction #i

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

— Kenneth Koch

#i #myself #never #new #new york

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

#excited #friends #i #interested #little

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

#i #i write #influenced #me #other

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

#early #even #ever #friends #guess

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

#either #encouraging #getting #guess #had

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

— Kenneth Koch

#generation #good #maybe #poets #really

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

#box #clicking #clicks #endless #experienced