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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.

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
Poem
Wants
Cannot

More quotes by John Ashbery

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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?
John Ashbery
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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.
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
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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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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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It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
John Ashbery
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
John Ashbery
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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.
John Ashbery
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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.
John Ashbery
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I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
John Ashbery
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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.
John Ashbery
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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.
John Ashbery
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A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
John Ashbery
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All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.
John Ashbery
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The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
John Ashbery
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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.
John Ashbery
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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
John Ashbery
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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
John Ashbery
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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
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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.
John Ashbery