I think often we get sidetracked around the public responsibility of the poet. We don't spend a lot of time talking about the private responsibility of the poet. Which maybe we should. Very recently, I had my thesis students start "required daydreaming." They have to sit there and daydream. And they can't do anything else.
A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through detours or art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which that person's heart first opened.