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There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

John Ashbery

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John Ashbery
Age: 90 †
Born: 1927
Born: July 28
Died: 2017
Died: September 3
Journalist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Rochester
New York
G'on Ashberi
John Ashberry
Jonas Barry
Jon Asshuberī
John Lawrence Ashbery
John Ashbery
Think
Confuse
Thinking
Improve
Life
Salvation
People
Army
View
Poetry
Views
Inspirational

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A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
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Extreme patience and persistence are required, Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed The surprise box lunch of the rest of his life.
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Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don't you see It's all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set And that's ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about.
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Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.
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... the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon.
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The winter does what it can for its children.
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The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
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I'm heading for a clean-named place like Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get there without help and nosy proclivities.
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Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven't fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.
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The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
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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.
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Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
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The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes
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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.
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Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture, A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
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Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
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The ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear In our present. Its flexing is its account, Return to the point of no return.
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Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.
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Silly girls your heads full of boys
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Life is beautiful. He who reads that As in the window of some distant, speeding train Knows what he wants, and what will befall.
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