John Ashbery Quotes

John Ashbery — American Poet born on July 28, 1927,

John Lawrence Ashbery is 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, he once joked that some critics still view him as "a harebrained, homegrown surrealist whose poetry defies even the rules and logic of Surrealism.".. (wikipedia)

I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.

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

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

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.

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