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The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through …John Ashbery
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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
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A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probablythere too, and bore witness as only rodents can.John Ashbery
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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 whole Like some pocket history of the world, so general As to constitute a sob or wailJohn Ashbery
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecisionJohn Ashbery
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Until only infinity remained of beautyJohn Ashbery
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The music brought us what it seemed / We had long desired, but in a form / so rarefied there was no emptiness of sensationJohn Ashbery
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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
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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.John Ashbery
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How many people came and stayed a certain time, Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you Like light behind windblown fog and sand Filtered and influenced by it, until no part Remains that is surely you.John Ashbery
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It is the lumps and trials That tell us whether we shall be known And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.John Ashbery
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You bad birds, But God shall not punish you, you Shall be with us in heaven, though less Conscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we. Hell is a not quite satisfactory heaven, probably, But you are the fruit and jewels Of my arrangement .. .John Ashbery
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The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takesJohn Ashbery
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I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.John Ashbery
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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.John Ashbery
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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.John Ashbery
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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