There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibilities that they are founded on nothing.
What I like about music is its ability to be convincing, to carry an argument through successfully to the finish, though the terms of the argument remain unknown quantities.
Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko’s art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.
We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won’t in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time.
What is the past, what is it all for? A mental sandwich?
The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything Like boarders, and you don’t see until It’s all over how little there was to learn Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.
A perfect example of the new republic’s urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
Try a little subtlety in self-defense; it’ll help, you’ll find out.
Ambiguity supposes eventual resolution of itself whereas certitude implies further ambiguity.
Walter Pater said that all the arts aspire to the condition of music, but I’ve always felt that music aspires to the condition of words.
My poetry is often criticized for a failure to communicate, but I take issue with this; my intention is to communicate and my feeling is that a poem that communicates something that’s already known by the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him.
Transgress. In a word, be other than yourself in turning into your love-soaked opposite.
I could have made a casserole out of these things, but you always say you like to know what you’re eating.
You have to try to imagine an ideal reader, who’s neither stupid nor able to know what your thoughts are.
It’s important to try to write when you are in the wrong mood or when the weather is wrong.
Darkness fell like a wet sponge.
There are good times in everybody’s satchel, nor do we all get a free pass. That would be a split decision, as they call it. How else is the planned brotherhood to float forward?
I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out would be another, and truer, way.
I am often asked why I write, and I don’t know really – I just like it.” – John Ashbery.