Quote

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

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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
Taking
Knowledge
Learn
Littles
Little
Everything
Stench
Mind
Hospitable
Like
Dissipated

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I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
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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.
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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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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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Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
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Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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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
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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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You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.
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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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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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To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
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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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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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Once a happy old man One can never change the core of things, and light burns you the harder for it.
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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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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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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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