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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.
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
Somebody
West
Feeling
Sun
Feelings
Moon
Ends
Step
Firsts
Toward
Hopelessness
First
Journey
Utter
Terrible
Confusion
Steps
East
More quotes by John Ashbery
Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
John Ashbery
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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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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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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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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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.
John Ashbery
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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It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
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Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
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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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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
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