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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
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
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Poetry
More quotes by John Ashbery
... 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
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
To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
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
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
I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
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
All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.
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
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
John Ashbery
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
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
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
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
John Ashbery
The winter does what it can for its children.
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 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
Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
John Ashbery
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
John Ashbery
Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
John Ashbery