Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Life
Desperate
Like
Solutions
Peacock
Sun
Spreading
Though
Tail
Read
Tails
Easy
Fades
Inspirational
Twilight
Might
Warning

More quotes by John Ashbery

Image
It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
John Ashbery
Image
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
John Ashbery
Image
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.
John Ashbery
Image
The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The winter does what it can for its children.
John Ashbery
Image
Silly girls your heads full of boys
John Ashbery
Image
The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
John Ashbery
Image
Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
John Ashbery
Image
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
Image
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.
John Ashbery
Image
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.
John Ashbery
Image
Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
John Ashbery
Image
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
John Ashbery
Image
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