I spent two life-altering semesters in classes with Kenneth Koch, who has since passed on. Last week, I found my notebook from those classes, which is filled not with notes, but with quotes. He could barely speak without seeming to mean, well, everything.
Here is a reprinting of many of the quotes — feel free to return to these from time to time, as I do.
Kenneth Koch Quotes
“Beauty can’t be separated from youth. Even Helen. They probably could have avoided that whole war if she’d have been over 45.”
“Some of the most interesting effects in poetry come from the ability to speed up, then slow down time.”
“There’s a pleasure in being the source of someone’s sublime thoughts.”
“Very few poets with any kind of talent write just to say something that”s already been said. You write to discover your secret knowledge.”
“By ‘talking the new morality’, he’s referring to free love. And she’s thinking of putting that new morality into practice.”
“If you want to be quick, sometimes you have to be obscure. If I say, “Emily was mean to me’, you might wonder who Emily is, but really, who cares? It’s much quicker than, ‘My next door neighbor Emily, of whom I’m quite fond….’”
“I love this little phrase ‘japanese paper napkin’. It’s a little bit of something just right.”
“The advantage of youth is being able to be lazy and enjoy it.”
“One realizes what the dog really should be doing, and, by analogy, what we probably really should be doing.”
“No one would want to wager their life on what ‘slipper green’ means.”
“When I was younger, I sent some of my poetry to Stevens. He wrote me back with a short note that said ‘I enjoy the freedom of your poetry, but I don’t think that you celebrate that freedom enough.’ “
“Understanding, you see, is a type of happiness.”
“With little charcoal eyes? I don’t think so.”
– on a bad, overly literal interpretation of The Snowman
“Well, I like the idea, but I don’t know if it will sustain me until lunch.”
“I like the thrill of evil in this poem.”
– Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
“We are born into separation, and from that comes a music. The poem is a thinking vigil: watching for an idea about what is obscure and dark.”
“Think of marriages and funerals. It’s odd how words make an event.”
“Why buy nice China? Why learn to cook? I don’t know. I kinda think it gets us close to something. Paradoxically, we never really get there, but it’s fun being close.”
“The computer was backed up. What? Oh, I don’t know what computers do….”
“There’s this other concern one has with the sun.”
“Why is it we get excited when something looks like something else? Mistaking one thing for another is a glimpse of order that slips away.”
“It sounds like one might be caught on the blade of an enormous lawnmower, yet it doesn’t sound cluttered…”
– on a part of Le Monocle
As Koch was ruminating on Stevens, we all heard a strange sound in the front of the classroom that resembled a metal clack, which Koch likened to a bullet being accepted into a chamber:
Koch: Does someone have me covered?
TA: I’m sorry. I was trying to open a can of soda quietly.
Koch: Who tries to do that? You can’t do that. Does a cherry have no pit? Does a baby not cry?
“Why not just destroy Nantucket? Williams would say, ‘Because of this moment.’”
“As soon as things get too legato, they’re false.”
“I like the idea of getting dressed up to go to a poem.”
“People tend to look wonderful when they’re absorbed.”
“Everyone, really, loves violence.”
“Suppose you’re looking at the face of someone who gives you delight and despair. What are you going to write about? A nose? Teeth? Some ears? How do you keep that intensity? Art is basically making that intensity more accessible.”
“Take my word for it.”
– To a very amateur student disputing his interpretation of a poem
“It’s like a canteen of childhood happiness that one carries around.”
“People are sentimental around children because they’re threatened by them.”
“I presume there wasn’t much of a courtship.”
“Do lovers get more out of the night?”
“That longing seems to Rilke to be important, to be some part of the truth.”
“I like the way you opened the poem: it’s a bit like being dragged into a dark room and being punched in the stomach.”
“There’s a certain lack of quality…..everyplace.”
“Pleasure should be your guide in eating and art.”
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