Quote

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

John Ashbery

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Ashbery
Age: 90 †
Born: 1927
Born: July 28
Died: 2017
Died: September 3
Journalist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Rochester
New York
G'on Ashberi
John Ashberry
Jonas Barry
Jon Asshuberī
John Lawrence Ashbery
John Ashbery
Places
Poetry
Like
Tack
Hammer
Hammers
Hollow
Poems

More quotes by John Ashbery

Image
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
John Ashbery
Image
I listen to music a great deal. In a way, it's trying to express things that can't be expressed in words. That's something that interests me, too. Even though I use words to express myself, I am trying to, it seems to me, get beyond that.
John Ashbery
Image
I'm heading for a clean-named place like Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get there without help and nosy proclivities.
John Ashbery
Image
Some certified nut Will try to tell you it's poetry, (It's extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense) But watch out or he'll start with some New notion or other.
John Ashbery
Image
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
John Ashbery
Image
Extreme patience and persistence are required, Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed The surprise box lunch of the rest of his life.
John Ashbery
Image
The ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is its account, Return to the point of no return.
John Ashbery
Image
Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
John Ashbery
Image
And the way Though discontinuous, and intermittent, sometimes Not heard of for years at a time, did, Nonetheless, move up, although, to his surprise It was inside the house, And always getting narrower.
John Ashbery
Image
The sun fades like the spreading Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight Might be read as a warning to those desperate For easy solutions.
John Ashbery
Image
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
John Ashbery
Image
And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference. Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.
John Ashbery
Image
Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don't you see It's all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set And that's ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about.
John Ashbery
Image
Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
John Ashbery
Image
Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven't fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.
John Ashbery
Image
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
John Ashbery
Image
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
John Ashbery
Image
We are prisoners of the world's demented sink. The soft enchantments of our years of innocence Are harvested by accredited experience Our fondest memories soon turn to poison And only oblivion remains in season.
John Ashbery
Image
In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
John Ashbery
Image
... the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon.
John Ashbery