One of the better things about poetry is that no one mistakes its utterance for the laying down of the law, not for the law of the state or society nor that of God nor that of any other kind of father. No one obeys a poem, and even if they tried to, the poem would vanish at the attempt, and obedience, also, find itself transmuted via eccentric application – one moment, devotion, then teeth-gritting contempt, then at least, intractability.
-- Anne Boyer
