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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.

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
May
Strength
Doubt
Literature
Whether
Fact
Facts
Art
Pollock
Part
Poetry

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The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
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To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
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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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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
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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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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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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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I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
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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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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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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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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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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 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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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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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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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
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