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

I love painting and music, of course. I dont know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. Ive certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didnt read it until I was in my late 20s. – Kenneth Koch

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 its not. – Kenneth Koch