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

— John Ashbery

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

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

I'm heading for a clean-named placelike Wisconsin, and mad as a Jack O'Lantern, will get there without help and nosy proclivities.

— John Ashbery

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

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

— John Ashbery

It's a bit mad. Too bad, I mean, that getting to know each just for a fleeting second Must be replaced by perfect knowledge of the featureless whole Like some pocket history of the world, so generals to constitute a sob or wail

— John Ashbery

So one can lose a good idea by not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other aside sit knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiations are terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and does recognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier.

— John Ashbery

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

— John Ashbery

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

— John Ashbery