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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.

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
Men
Core
Harder
Age
Happy
Light
Change
Things
Never
Burns

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Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
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The winter does what it can for its children.
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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 gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
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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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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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In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
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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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A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
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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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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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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.
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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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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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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
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To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
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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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