This matter of Soul-making …

… First Known When Lost: How To Live, Part Twenty-Seven: Equanimity.

… as I have stated in the past, I do not believe that the purpose of poetry is to edify. A poet who sets out to write a poem aimed at teaching us something is doomed to failure. Thus, for instance, that contradiction in terms known as "political poetry": a soi-disant "poem" that purports to instruct us on the rightness or wrongness of a political belief (left, right, or Martian) does not, under any circumstances, qualify as poetry. Self-regarding propaganda, yes. Poetry, no.

Indeed.