There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think peopl… — John Ashbery

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

John AshberyPoet · American · b. 1927

More from John Ashbery

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business. — Henry David Thoreau
For me, poetry is a situation - a state of being, a way of facing life and facing history. — Tahar Ben Jelloun
The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. — Alexis de Tocqueville
I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places. — John Ashbery
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be. — John Ashbery
I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them. — John Ashbery