Soft Targets and the Enemy

The official job description of the U.S. Poet Laureate contains a puzzling metaphor.

"The Poet Laureate ... serves as the nation's official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans."*

We consult the Concise Oxford Dictionary (8th edition, 1990):

The Poet Laureate has been fixed to an exposed part of America to divert the poetic impulse of its people into the earth or sea.

"We seek an inadequate enemy, one who comes to capitulate. We seek the declared enemy," says the editorial We of Soft Targets.

I will let all this stand as an ideogram.

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*As of July 8, 2013, this is still how the page at the Library of Congress reads.