Quote

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.

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
Together
Rule
Accustomed
Everything
Horse
Strings
Like
Havens
Motion
Haven
Demon
Trust
Connect
Emanations
Doubt
Sets
Rocking
Stop
Disappointment
Disappointments
Cannot
Fully
Ruled

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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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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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The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
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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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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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What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
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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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Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
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Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
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The soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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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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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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It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
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The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
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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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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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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 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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