poetry traffics in imitation?

Does traffic here refer to "deal illegally"?

Context:


The promise and peril of poetry resides in its mimetic nature. As with other arts such as painting, poetry traffics in imitation. This act of mimesis is never a straightforward copy, which is why it must be subject to scrutiny. Like literary realism in the nineteenth century, mimesis in the classical world concerned more than mere imitation. It was about an imaginative reconstruction of life that attempted to distill its features and embody its moods. As the novelist Henry James puts it, the artist takes “the faintest hints of life” and “converts the very pulses of the air into revelations.”