“ I'm heading for a clean-named placelike Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get therewithout help and nosy proclivities. John Ashbery
“ A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probablythere too, and bore witness as only rodents can. John Ashbery
“ I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length. John Ashbery
“ 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 s… John Ashbery
“ There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army. John Ashbery
“ The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes John Ashbery
“ You bad birds,But God shall not punish you, youShall be with us in heaven, though lessConscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we.Hell is a not quite satisfactory heaven, probably,But you are the fr… John Ashbery
“ It is the lumps and trialsThat tell us whether we shall be knownAnd whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star. John Ashbery
“ 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 terminate… John Ashbery
“ 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. John Ashbery
“ The music brought us what it seemed / We had long desired, but in a form / so rarefied there was no emptiness of sensation John Ashbery
“ 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… John Ashbery
