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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
Basements
Regrets
Regret
Poet
Reader
Perhaps
Quilt
Inspirational
Quilts
Life
Basement

More quotes by John Ashbery

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The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
John Ashbery
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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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The winter does what it can for its children.
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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
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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.
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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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All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.
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Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
John Ashbery
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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.
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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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... 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.
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Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
John Ashbery
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And the way Though discontinuous, and intermittent, sometimes Not heard of for years at a time, did, Nonetheless, move up, although, to his surprise It was inside the house, And always getting narrower.
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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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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
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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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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
John Ashbery
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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.
John Ashbery
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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.
John Ashbery