Of course, there's the strong possibility that the something people want poetry to do is simply to be poetry. To serve as a marker of the poem-bearer's class/taste/distinction. Candlelight atmosphere, not to put that down -- poetry as an object.

Then there's poetry as proxy -- the greeting card function, in which a feeling (one) is conveyed by the poet to a third party on behalf of the person presenting it. I know a lot of the "sought poems" I've been writing on the other blog fall into this category, or rather, the poems are an attempt to make poetry serve a function I imagine an audience demands. Cyrano is the apotheosis -- the single feeling conveyed is allowed something of the richness of a poetry that conveys a person's whole experience; the weird noise so beloved to poetry junkies is mostly screened out when people want poetry to serve this proxy function.

(Incidentally, it's that noise, and the poetry junkies' love of it, that bugs the shit out of certain gatekeepers, and is almost invariably what prompts vocal hostility to poetry.)