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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.
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
Everybody
Lunch
Life
Extreme
Extremes
Boxes
Patience
Succeeds
Surprise
Handed
Succeed
Persistence
Rest
Required
More quotes by John Ashbery
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 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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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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Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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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 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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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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In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
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Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
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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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Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse. Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.
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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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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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And the way Though discontinuous, and intermittent, sometimes Not heard of for years at a time, did, Nonetheless, move up, although, to his surprise It was inside the house, And always getting narrower.
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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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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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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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