Some certified nut Will try to tell you it's poetry, (It's extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense) But watch out… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
“A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probably there too, and bore witness as only rodents can.” — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
I often wonder if I am suffering from some mental dysfunction because of how weird and baffling my poetry seems to so… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the… — 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
My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the… — 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
Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
“And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name" You can’t say it that way any more. Bothered about beauty you have to Come… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
I feel that poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream. — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
One listens to a piece of great music, say, and feels deeply moved by it, and wants to put this feeling into… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
I think that in the process of writing, all kinds of unexpected things happen that shift the poet away from his plan… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It's sort of the way dreams come to… — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
I want a bedroom near the sky, an astrologer's cave Where I can fashion eclogues that are chaste and grave. — John Ashbery Copy Share Image
I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places. — 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
“Oh there once was a woman and she kept a shop selling trinkets to tourists not far from a dock who came… — 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
“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
