John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashberyis an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Renowned for its postmodern complexity and opacity, Ashbery's work still proves controversial. Ashbery has stated that he wishes his work to be accessible to as many people as possible, and not to be a private dialogue with himself. At the same time,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth28 July 1927
CountryUnited States of America
Life is not at all what you might think it to be A simple tale where each thing has its history It's much more than its scuffle and anything goes Both evil and good, subject to the same laws.
Life is beautiful. He who reads that As in the window of some distant, speeding train Knows what he wants, and what will befall.
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how....
To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets ...
The sun fades like the spreading Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight Might be read as a warning to those desperate For easy solutions.
This whole moment is the groin Of a borborygmic giant who even now Is rolling over on us in his sleep.
Then let yourself love all that you take delight in Accept yourself whole, accept the heritage That shaped you and is passed on from age to age Down to your entity. Remain mysterious; Rather than be pure, accept yourself as numerous.
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
All beauty, resonance, integrity, Exist by deprivation or logic Of strange position.
Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat....
So that the old joy, modest as cake, as wine and friendship Will stay with us at the last, backed by the night Whose ruse gave it our final meaning
You stupefied me. We waxed, Carnivores, late and alight In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.
I'm heading for a clean-named place like Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get there without help and nosy proclivities.
It is because everything is relative That we shall never see in that sphere of pure wisdom and Entertainment much more than groping shadows of an incomplete Former existence so close it burns like the mouth that Closes down over all your effort like the moment Of death