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Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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
Doe
Inevitability
Stink
Starts
Inevitable
Events
Happen
Happens
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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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To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.
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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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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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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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I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.
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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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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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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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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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In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
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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 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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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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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
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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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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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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 sun fades like the spreading Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight Might be read as a warning to those desperate For easy solutions.
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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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