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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.

John Ashbery

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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
Immortal
Tried
Free
Thing

More quotes by John Ashbery

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Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It's sort of the way dreams come to us and the way that we get knowledge from them, through television, old movies, which I watch a lot of. Lines of dialogue suddenly seem to be part of a poem.
John Ashbery
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Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
John Ashbery
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And just as there are no words for the surface, that is, No words to say what it really is, that it is not Superficial but a visible core, then there is No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
John Ashbery
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You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.
John Ashbery
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Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
John Ashbery
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To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
John Ashbery
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... 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
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The soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
John Ashbery
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I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
John Ashbery
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What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
John Ashbery
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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
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A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
John Ashbery
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The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything Like boarders, and you don't see until It's all over how little there was to learn Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.
John Ashbery
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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
John Ashbery
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I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.
John Ashbery
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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
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Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
John Ashbery
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Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
John Ashbery
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Life is not at all what you might think it to be A simple tale where each thing has its history It's much more than its scuffle and anything goes Both evil and good, subject to the same laws.
John Ashbery
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The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
John Ashbery