John Ashbery Poems

Don't forget to view our John Ashbery home page with links to biographical information, articles, and more poems that may not be listed here.

• Best John Ashbery Poems
• John Ashbery Quotes

 As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur,...Read More

 What name do I have for you? 
Certainly there is not name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around, 

An object...Read More

 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of...Read More

 Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the...Read More

 Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly
Like the Niagara's welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire
Near...Read More

 Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament....Read More

 The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits 
in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country."
Meanwhile the Sea Hag...Read More

 Light rain is falling in Central Park
but not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West
where sun and sky are yellow and blue
Winds are gusting on Washington Square
through the...Read More

 Did you know that Evian spelled backwards is naive?
I myself was unaware of this fact until last Tuesday night
when John Ashbery, Marc Cohen, and Eugene Richie
gave a poetry reading...Read More

 Wisteria, hysteria is as obvious a rhyme
as Viagra and Niagara there must be a reason
honeymooners traditionally went to the Falls
which were, said the divine Oscar,
an American bride's second biggest...Read More

 The man with the red hat
And the polar bear, is he here too? 
The window giving on shade, 
Is that here too? 
And all the little helps, 
My initials...Read More

 Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet andsalutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others...Read More