Latest John Ashbery Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It's sort of the way dreams come to us and the way that we get knowledge from them, through television, old movies, which I watch a lot of. Lines of dialogue suddenly seem to be part of a poem.

  John Ashbery

  Dream, Mind, Old Movie

  Source: www.pbs.org

• One listens to a piece of great music, say, and feels deeply moved by it, and wants to put this feeling into words, but it can't be put into words. That's what - the music has already supplied the meaning, and words will just be superfluous after that. But it's that kind of verbal meaning that can't be verbalized that I try to get at in poetry.

  John Ashbery

  Feelings, Trying, Kind

  Source: www.pbs.org

• I always thought that writing poetry was in itself a political act.

  John Ashbery

  Writing, Political, Writing Poetry

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

• My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are not the people who read poetry, unfortunately. Poetry not specifically aimed at political revolution, though, is beneficial in moving people toward that kind of action, as well as other kinds of action. A good poem makes me want to be active on as many fronts as possible.

  John Ashbery

  Moving, Political Revolution, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I listen to music a great deal. In a way, it's trying to express things that can't be expressed in words. That's something that interests me, too. Even though I use words to express myself, I am trying to, it seems to me, get beyond that.

  John Ashbery

  Trying, Use, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com