X.J. Kennedy Quotes

#1. I like poems where you don't really know whether to laugh or cry when you read them.

X.J. Kennedy

#2. Trying their wings once more in hopeless flight: Blind moths against the wires of window screens.
Anything. Anything for a fix of light.
X. J. Kennedy, "Street Moths," The Lords of Misrule

X.J. Kennedy

#3. Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass
Like a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass.
Keep your bottoms off barstools and marry you young
Or be left
an old barrel with many a bung.

X.J. Kennedy

#4. I don't think anybody is a poet 24/7, only in those rare moments when a person is producing a poem.

X.J. Kennedy

#5. To leap over the wall of self, to look through another's eyes--this is valuable experience, which literature offers.

X.J. Kennedy

#6. In poetry, only emotion endures.

X.J. Kennedy

#7. I'd be glad to go out on a limb with those
Who want nothing beyond what the wind bestows,
Were I not bound to roots, dug in deep to bear
Never being done grasping for light and air

X.J. Kennedy

#8. In thigh-high yellow leather boots Plump Saphonisba strides. Too bad that, just to hide her calves, Two calves have lost their hides.

X.J. Kennedy

#9. My real name is Joe Kennedy, but if you live in Massachusetts, you can't sign 'Joe Kennedy.' So, back in 1957, I stuck the X on my name to be different from those people in Hyannis Port.

X.J. Kennedy

#10. As a writer given to the old formalities of rhyme and meter, I sometimes feel endangered these days.

X.J. Kennedy

#11. To me, a poem that's in rhyme and meter is the difference between watching a film in full color and watching a film in black and white. Not that a few black and white films aren't wonderful. So are certain successful pieces of free verse.

X.J. Kennedy

#12. The attitude that poetry should not be analyzed is prevalent among many who consider themselves experts on children's literature. But I suspected that kids like to look closely at things and figure out what makes them go.

X.J. Kennedy

#13. The Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything from Happening at Once

X.J. Kennedy

#14. Here lies resting, out of breath,
Out of turns, Elizabeth
Whose quicksilver toes not quite
Cleared the whirring edge of night.

X.J. Kennedy

#15. On solemn asses fall plush sinecures, So keep a straight face and sit tight on yours.

X.J. Kennedy