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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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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
Regrets
Regret
Poet
Reader
Perhaps
Quilt
Inspirational
Quilts
Life
Basement
Basements

More quotes by John Ashbery

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In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
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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.
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And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference. Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.
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Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
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It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
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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.
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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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Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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