The Edge of Reading: Poetry

I was going to write about Canadian author and provocateur Nathaniel G. Moore today. Then I realized that I don't really have anything to say about him, mostly because I haven't read anything by him (with the exception of a couple of poems excerpted from his Let's Pretend We Never Have Met, two bookslut articles, and his blog). From all of that I can tell that Moore is the Canadian equivalent of Jim Behrle, my favourite public intellectual - he's all about bravado, provocation, and distrust if not outright hatred of the CanLit establishment. He's also into wrestling. In short, here's what I like about Moore: his attitude. Here's what I don't know about Moore: how well he writes. 

This isn't an isolated problem - you may recall that I said the same thing about Behrle way back in the day. I believe that it stems from a terrible root cause that I'm really ashamed of - I can't process poetry [Moore also writes fiction, but please humour me on this one]. I've got a couple hundred books in my room, but only three of them are poetry collections or chapbooks; one of those is a poetry book by Jim Morrisson. Another one of those is Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Elliot. This often dismays me and I find it largely inexplicable, because I listen to a lot of music, and I'm a huge lyrics guy; I find it hard to understand how it fails to translate into liking words arranged on a page on their own. Maybe it's because lyrics are generally more simplistic, more narrative, and less lyrical than poetry. Whatever. 

That's not to say that I don't read ANY poetry. I read (and liked) Dylan Thomas and E.E. Cummings; I also enjoyed some Phillip Larkin poems. I read lots of Leonard Cohen's poetry for a class last semester, and some of Irving Layton's. Reading over this list, I see that there's one thing that connects all of these writers; they all had an 'attitude,' either in the way they wrote, or in their biographies, which sometimes overwhelmed their output. Like anyone who only dabbles in something, I fail to recognize quality and go straight for the 'cool' attitude as a substitute [a perfect comparison would be the fact that I didn't realize how awkward Kanye West's flow was until I listened to other rappers]. And the thing is, I don't really care to learn more and read Howl or The Wasteland and so on. The weighty lyrical stuff just doesn't do it for me. So I end up basically treating poetry as something that should be clever and punchy rather than affecting and intellectually stimulating - a poem that I consider 'good' should produce at least one solid line, something quotable and preferably funny (Irving Layton's "you went behind the bush to piss/imagine Wordsworth telling this" is a case study). Forget about layers of imagery and subtly suggested visual/sound motifs and all of that junk. I sacrifice depth for instant gratification and superficiality. 

So I really don't know about Moore. Here's my favourite thing of Moore that I read so far: 

XCIII: Conservative Party

Stephen Harper, I am not particularly

obsessed to side with you,

or know the colour of your silk tie.

You see? It's short, it's extremely clever and it's instantly quotable, but when I look at it from a certain angle it's a 100% disposable jingle. I don't mean to say that everything that Moore writes is like this, not even in the littlest bit - the book this is excerpted from is a re-telling of the life of the Roman poet Catullus, weighty shit - but the fact that this is basically the only stuff I care about makes me a little bit, well, uninteresting. So um, any suggestions for improving myself w.r.t. reading poetry? Is it even wrong to not care about lyrical poetry and stuff beyond looking for punch-lines? Am I just feeling inadequate because the modernists were cerebral assholes who ruined poetry forever?