“We live our lives, made up of a great quantity of / isolated instants / So as to be lost at the… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
The sun fades like the spreading Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight Might be read as a warning to those desperate… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
The ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army. — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
Then let yourself love all that you take delight in Accept yourself whole, accept the heritage That shaped you and is passed… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
I don't find any direct statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness come to me, which… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
We are prisoners of the world's demented sink. The soft enchantments of our years of innocence Are harvested by accredited experience Our… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
Life is not at all what you might think it to be A simple tale where each thing has its history It's… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
Life is beautiful. He who reads that As in the window of some distant, speeding train Knows what he wants, and what… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous. — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position. — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
Extreme patience and persistence are required, Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed The surprise box lunch of the rest of… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest? — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets ... — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
This whole moment is the groin Of a borborygmic giant who even now Is rolling over on us in his sleep. — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
The soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
It is because everything is relative That we shall never see in that sphere of pure wisdom and Entertainment much more than… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
But always and sometimes questioning the old modes And the new wondering, the poem, growing up through the floor, Standing tall in… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
“You meant more than life to me. I lived through you not knowing, not knowing I was living. I learned that you… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
“Yes, they are alive and can have those colors, But I, in my soul, am alive too. I feel I must sing and dance,… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
How many people came and stayed a certain time, Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you Like light behind windblown fog… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
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… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
The ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is its account,… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
“The genius of Cornell is that he sees and enables us to see with the eyes of childhood, before our vision got clouded by… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
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… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat. — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
What I like about music is its ability to be convincing, to carry an argument through successfully to the finish, though the terms of… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
“The Unknown Travelers Lugged to the gray arbor, I have climbed this snow-stone on my face, My stick, but what, snapped the avalanche The… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
