Quote

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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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
Stretching
Account
Accounts
Return
Present
Invisibly
Point
Reappear
Future
Flexing
Life
Aimless

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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 poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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The winter does what it can for its children.
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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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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It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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Extreme patience and persistence are required, Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed The surprise box lunch of the rest of his life.
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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 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 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.
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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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... 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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