Straight messianism of the old sincerity: a moving bit of Allan Grossman from The Sighted Singer, quoted in Norman Finkelstein's Not One of Them in Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish American Identity:

My poems are addressed to some state of the persons around me other than that which they currently find themselves in. My poems should be addressed, are intended to be addressed, not to the present powers, but to the future powers of my readers. I believe that poems should not be addressed to the already possessed states of consciousness of the persons who read them. Poems should have an empowering strangeness about them which summons its audience rather than receives its audience.