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Its a bit mad. Too bad, I mean, that getting to know each just for a fleeting second Must be replaced by unperfect knowledge of the featureless whole Like some pocket history of the world, so general As to constitute a sob or wail
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
World
Bits
Constitute
Getting
Pocket
Knowledge
Fleeting
History
Replaced
Whole
Pockets
Must
Mad
Mean
General
Featureless
Like
Second
Wail
More quotes by John Ashbery
Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
John Ashbery
It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
John Ashbery
Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse. Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.
John Ashbery
The winter does what it can for its children.
John Ashbery
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
John Ashbery
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
John Ashbery
Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
John Ashbery
Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.
John Ashbery
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
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
To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
John Ashbery
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
I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
John Ashbery
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
John Ashbery
Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition.
John Ashbery
Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
John Ashbery
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
John Ashbery
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
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
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
