Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
John Ashbery
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Inspirational
Think
Confuse
Thinking
Improve
Life
Salvation
People
Army
View
Poetry
Views
More quotes by John Ashbery
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
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
John Ashbery
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
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
Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
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
All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.
John Ashbery
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
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
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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
The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
John Ashbery
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
John Ashbery
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
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
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
In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
John Ashbery
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
A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
John Ashbery
Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
John Ashbery