I read a *ton* of poetry -- I almost never read novels, my pleasure reading is almost entirely poetry and nonfiction -- so my thoughts on it are:

1) most poetry is bad. Mind you, the corollary of this is that the minority of poems that are good are *astoundingly* good, but unfortunately they coexists alongside the bad -- frequently inside the same book by the same poet. So I'll pick up a book by [poet X] and read one truly amazing one, buy the book, then discover that literally 95% of the rest of the book is super meh. That's the weird hazard of the art form; while there are some poets who are *routinely* good (I think Emily Dickinson is a superb example of this, for my aesthetic) reading poetry is like mining for gold. You sift through a ton of dross until suddenly a poem -- or even one *part* of a poem -- hits you like a shot of morphine.

This extremely low signal-to-noise ratio is a challenge when it comes to diving into poetry. I've learned to tolerate it, because the highs are so unspeakably high I don't mind the slog. But it's not for everyone!

2) I am ruthless when it comes to tossing aside poetry that isn't *immediatley* doing it for me. I pick up a book, read a few poems ... if they're not grabbing me *right then*, right *by the collar*, I toss it aside. Life's short; I'm not gonna sit around studying stuff and hoping it'll grow on me. I encourage everyone to behave the same way, with rule 1) in mind ...

3) I don't read thinking "hmmm do I get what the poet means here?" Hell, half the damn time the poets themselves don't know what they mean; I say that as a deep compliment, and with respect for just how incredibly weird poetry is, and where it comes from, creatively. I don't approach poems looking for a big deep meaning, and I think teachers who approach it that way ruin it for their students, heh. Half the time I'm just reading to enjoy the odd, oblique, weird uses of language -- the mouthfeel of it, or perhaps the *mindfeel.* I mean, I do love it when a few lines really strike me with their idea ... or when they inspire in me a new idea (quite apart from, again, whatever the heck the poet intended.) I don't know if this helps at all, but this is how I do it!