The noble function of poetry

While cleaning my room today, I found a copy of Richard Brautigan's "The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings". In one of the introductions, I found a very telling paragraph:

Often [Brautigan's] poems were designed to get him a girlfriend. This strategy remained a constant; Brautigan wrote many of his poems because, as an ex-girlfriend once remarked, "Richard was always on the make." (Kenneth Rexroth once opined that poetry functions nobly to ease our passages in and out of love, and that anyone who writes poems for other reasons is out to lunch.)

I can certainly agree with Rexroth here, except for a few notable exceptions. For example, when I read "The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell, I don't get the impression that he was trying to get laid or get over a past lover, yet the poem is definitely good (and Lowell was not 'out to lunch'). I would even go as far to say that abolitionism was a more noble cause than getting laid. I really hope no one disagrees with me!