Q. You are still writing poetry and last fall you had an exhibit of your collages at a Manhattan gallery. Could you please share some lessons of a long life?
A. I go back to Harvard and see all the same buildings and streets and rivers. It seems as though this was only a few months ago that I was there. I don't know that I have really accumulated any wisdom in my fourscore years. I feel as unprepared now as I was when I was a student. I guess I'm just an 80-year-old adolescent. Or 81.
I almost wept when I read Ashbery's answer.
An Ashbery collage:
