“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 genera...”

— John Ashbery

knowledge

“Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision”

— John Ashbery

indecision time

“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 termin...”

— John Ashbery, Flow Chart

forgetting memory thought

“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 i...”

— John Ashbery

influence others poem poetry

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

— John Ashbery

fate hardship

“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...”

— John Ashbery

birds heaven hell

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

— John Ashbery

night summer

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

— John Ashbery

Poem Because Cannot

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

— John Ashbery

Life People Think

“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.”