Enjoyment of poetry

I do enjoy poetry, but the problem is, with the exception to inspirational poetry (which I find very enjoyable/moreso than personal poetry), 'enjoy' is a bit too happy of a word to apply; mostly its more of the way one is drawn into tragedy, like reading a novel evoking feelings of desolation or watching a tearful movie more than once. Poetry aims at hitting emotions and states of being that cannot be accurately described in language limited to mere straightforwardness; takes me out of blunt analysis's (sp?) and places it into that which is more subtle, more elusive, and more satisfyingly accurate for things that, for eternity, no matter how hard we wish, will remain unsatisfyingly unprecise--or, depending on the poem, that which is knowable having been expressed more precisely or being turned on its head. It inspires on a different level, something psychological, philosophical, religious--without actually necessitating direct involvement with any of those 3 or other categories one would like to apply...

I will admit though, I'm not sure if I like what most poets consider good poetry--I've heard a million poets disparage Eliots' "The Wasteland" as trash; Jewel's 'A Night Without Armor' as merely okay-for-a-celeb; Robert Frost (say what you will but he had like...5? good ones... ok. maybe I agree a little there.); and any poems that shed a somewhat more positive light on love than most 'real' poets give to the subject, all things I've found at least somewhat lovely.

Maybe the bad taste was drilled into me early- The first book of poems I read that weren't written for kids/nursery rhymes/part of a Jewish prayer book (which, as a funny side note, I for years mistook to be the old testament of the bible), was Rod Mckuen's "With Love". I think I found it around when I was about 7/right after I'd moved to GA, in a pile of things belonging to the houses' previous owners my mom had cleaned out from the attic. Some of the poems do have happier edges, and I don't find it corny (though I'm sure there probably is some love poetry I would find corny [ie-anything resembling 95 % of 'pop' music], I think its nice hearing people celebrate having love rather than wanting it).

This spawned curiosity of more poetry when I was finally allowed to use the internet by myself (9/10ish)--which I found in poetry.com. Not realizing they probably accept most of what's submitted to them (since published people tend to want to buy the book their published in, and a few extra copies for relatives as well...), I started both reading thier apparently-debatably-good poetry as well as writing/submitting my own... 2 got published, one of which I got the book it was in, but then I started thinking of the probability of it being kind of scammy. Jewel was next; I always loved her music, pre-mtv days, and I remember loving a lot of her poems too, though I've since lost the book to see if that's still in my taste/don't remember much of what the subject was... (I was kind of 12 at the time...)

I continued writing poetry for a couple of years, but by the time I was in high school, things changed. Early on, increased drinking suppressed the sadness and the ability to evaluate how I was living life necessary for poetic thinking--and when I had to quit drinking, after the second round of alcohol poisoning within months of the first, there were other harder things to take its place. Being the definition of young and stupid, I moved from poetry to working on a really horrible 'novel' full of drug stories that didn't focus exactly on on particular characters but had certain points when some characters met the others... basically, it was a very confusing at one point 200-300 page pile of crap (and after I eliminated 'double stories'-ones which were mainly the same as the other pages but had been edited slightly or took the plot different places, it got down to 120. and then 72. and then 42. and as of recently, 0, because I don't see myself being anywhere close to the state of mind I was in when I wrote it...)

So, that killed a few years of possible poetry until I graduated high school. Long story short, a lot of things happened after I graduated that changed things (As I suppose probably happens with everyone around that time). I've been in some form of school since I was 2; that was gone. I filled the empty homework time by retreating to my old love, reading novels, and to something I had picked up in my scarce free time in high school, reading books on different religious faiths (in particular, I re-read John Snellings "The Buddhist Handbook" and the gospels of the bible alot...). This inspired a renewed interest in poetry.
Also about that time, I was losing faith in a relationship that had been there for 3 years; it had to disappear, for happiness true-to-oneself sake, but I still cared for his well-being, and it made me sadder than I could put into non-poetic words to have to end it. Renewance number two.

Working at Toys R Us didn't give me anything intelligent to think about on my off time, but it did show me why I hate working the only type of crappy jobs available to those without college degrees/special skills. Renewance number three, this one in bitter-angry-hate-the-system type of way.

Finally, after re-reading Kerouac's "On the Road" a couple years back/around this same time, I decided to check out "The Dharma Bums". The poetry in it is very zen, simple but indicative of reality in a beautiful way.

The poetry I enjoy writing these days tends to be on the shorter side/around 6-8 lines. Last year, amongst more relationship/financial problems, I retreated into longer emotion-driven poetry, and occasionally it does still pop up, especially once i hit despair over things going on in the general world as well as in my own life, but generally, the focus is more on spiritual issues and/or 'beyond'-statements about reality observed.

Admittedly, when it comes to wanting to achieve some sort of level of professional/good-enough-to-be-published writing, my focus is more on fiction. I don't know if its because I was exposed to so much more of that than poetry growing up, or if its just an innate-thick-brainedness that makes 'bad' poetry enjoyable and 'good' poetry sometimes confusing as hell... Or maybe, even though I fully recognize poetry to have the ability to have false narrators/played with the technique when I was young, I like being able to divide the activities I do to have purpose sacred onto itself, rather than everything just having the same purpose--

In my mind, fictional stories require one to put themselves in a mostly-if-not-completely different persona while poetry, at least when I write it, is meant to be something personal or impersonally inspirational. In both types of writing, one is showing the audience a certain effect without entirely leaving it up to direct statements.

I like leaving it at fiction when it comes to being someone else--its enjoyable to be completely out of ones element/own way of thinking sometimes (though often this doesn't come into play until after editing process), but poetry provides the other half of necessity-the need to be ones self/have a way to work things out without going into a rant-rave-straight-up-complaining-style (more simply, emotions without being emo).

Anyways, you get the point. I enjoy poetry because 90% of the time, writing it involves dropping the pretense/being 'true' in a more ultimate sense of the word, yet keeping a way to disguise the subject matter enough to allow some skillful ambiguity which can allow anyone reading it to make it their own/relatable OR which, when straightforward enough, brings people to some form of awareness previously neglected before.