Quote

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.

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
Great
Fishes
Highways
Conundrums
Things
Boat
Grab
Impermanent
Like
Rivers
Swing
Expedition
Sea
Swings
Veiled
Sex
Lakes
Scruples
Therefore
Worn
Expeditions
Boys
Fishing
Blond
Morning
Horizon
Highway
Unimpeded

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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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The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
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Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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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 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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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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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 tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
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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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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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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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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
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All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
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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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Some certified nut Will try to tell you it's poetry, (It's extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense) But watch out or he'll start with some New notion or other.
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