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Life is beautiful. He who reads that As in the window of some distant, speeding train Knows what he wants, and what will befall.

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
Wants
Inspirational
Beautiful
Befall
Life
Speeding
Reads
Distant
Train
Window

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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
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Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.
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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.
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Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
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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.
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What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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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.
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To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
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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.
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The winter does what it can for its children.
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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.
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Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
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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.
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