Response to Poetry--What's the Deal?

The initial thoughts I get when I read poetry:

-Deep

-Shallow

-Too simplistic

-Way too much depth

-There's too many allusions I cannot make connections

-Oh--I think I know where the author is talking about--oh wait...I really don't.  Do I?

It seems that there are antithetical ways of viewing poetry that coexists in a paradoxical swirling of emotional and cognitive knee jerk reactions.

Mr. Staunton mentioned that it was frustrating teaching poetry with a either/or method.  Either students read poetry and TRULY UNDERSTAND the truth about the poem through neatly package processes skills.  OR they write poetry or write about the poetry in non-poetic form.

What interests me about this article is the motivation for the study: it was fueled by an interest in learning about poetry as well as noticing the frustrations about poetry himself.

As I've learned in this class, whenever something is confusing or frustrating, it usually is IMPORTANT.

I really like the definition of poetry being a concise ordering of word choice.  I'd like to take a poem and have my kids cut up all the words and RE-CREATE a poem using ONLY the words used in the poem.  I'd have them be required to use at least 90% of the words.