X.J. Kennedy Quotes

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.

In poetry, only emotion endures.

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

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

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.

Poetry is probably the one field of writing in which it is a mistake to try to psych out editors. In fact, specific marketing advice can sometimes harm the novice poet by enticing him to pursue fashions. The poet's best hope is to sound like nobody else, The finest, most enduring poetry constructs a marketplace of its own.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.