Quotes by John Ashbery

“There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.”

“I dont look on poetry as closed works. I feel theyre going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.”

“So that the old joy, modest as cake, as wine and friendship Will stay with us at the last, backed by the night Whose ruse gave it our final meaning”

“I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.”

“I dont want to read what is going to slide down easily; there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.”

“I write with experiences in mind, but I dont write about them, I write out of them.”

“A perfect example of the new republics urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.”

“Where Shall I Wander”

“The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.”

“[(I-Newswire) - In the free event, Bell will read from] No Planets Strike, ... Edgy in both senses of the word, Josh Bell populates his daft American heartland with the runaway muse Ramona and her clones. The resulting landscapes are as dangerous, funny, and drop-dead gorgeous as those in a Road Runner cartoon.”

The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through …

Im heading for a clean-named placelike Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o-lantern, will get therewithout help and nosy proclivities.

A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probablythere too, and bore witness as only rodents can.

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 wholeLike some pocket history of the world, so generalAs to constitute a sob or wail

Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision

until only infinity remained of beauty

The music brought us what it seemed / We had long desired, but in a form / so rarefied there was no emptiness of sensation

Walter Pater said that all the arts aspire to the condition of music, but I’ve always felt that music aspires to the condition of words.

So one can lose a good ideaby not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asidesit knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiationsare terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and doesrecognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier.

How many people came and stayed a certain time,Uttered light or dark speech that became part of youLike light behind windblown fog and sandFiltered and influenced by it, until no partRemains that is surely you.