John Ashbery

It is the lumps and trialsThat tell us whether we shall be knownAnd whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

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.

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.

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

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

until only infinity remained of beauty

Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision

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

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.

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

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

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.

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

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

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

The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes

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 fruit and jewelsOf my arrangement . . .