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
Littles
Little
Everything
Stench
Mind
Hospitable
Like
Dissipated
Taking
Knowledge
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More quotes by John Ashbery

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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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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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What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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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.
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The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
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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'm heading for a clean-named place like Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get there without help and nosy proclivities.
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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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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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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
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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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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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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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A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
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The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
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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 winter does what it can for its children.
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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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In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
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