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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
Whether
Fact
Facts
Art
Pollock
Part
Poetry
May
Strength
Doubt
Literature

More quotes by John Ashbery

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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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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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And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference. Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.
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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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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
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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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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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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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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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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
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The winter does what it can for its children.
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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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Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
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To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
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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 ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is its account, Return to the point of no return.
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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
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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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