So long as I'm at it. Michael Bérubé discusses theory, which is dull. But in the midst of it he gives us this:

Unbelted occupants
Are not able to resist
The tremendous forces of impact by holding tight
Or bracing themselves. Their impact
With the vehicle interior
Has all the energy they had
Just before the collision.

Confession: even after it is revealed to be from a 2003 VW Passat manual, I still kind of like it.

I don't really get short poems. I need structure and length in order to engage aesthetically. I like Gawain, I like Paradise Lost, I like Homer and Spencer and Chaucer. I am completely at sea with any poem under fourteen lines in length. I can't tell if it's good, bad, or ugly; a parody or a heartfelt cry; high art or haiku. When William Carlos Williams tells me he's eaten the plums in the icebox, I want to reply, "That's all right, they would have gone bad anyway. Did you have a nice fry-up, too?" I am reliably informed that that is a great poem: it is so far over my head that intergalactic geese need to dodge it. I also cannot bring myself to believe that so much depends on a red wagon.

I can, I think, judge certain pieces of art with reasonable accuracy. I can tell a good novel from a bad novel, and a great one from either. Ditto opera. But given a piano concerto, all I can do is grunt and nod. Some art is simply opaque to me, when those around me are moved to tears by it.

With these short, formless poems, I fall back on the obvious features. I like Basho's

Winter downpour-
Even the monkey
Needs a raincoat

because I picture a sad, wet monkey in a trenchcoat & fedora. Is it art? Beats me. I like the Passat poem, too; even the faux-analysis that follows it makes as much sense to me as any other examination of like poetry I've heard.

This is probably my own inadequate study showing. But certain works of art are instantly powerful; and I can't think of a modern poem that achieves that. Some art is great, and will always be great, even in translation, even out of its own time and compass. I have no theory behind this statement, nor any evidence I can present beyond my own experience.

UPDATE: At least in English poetry, I'm sure that my inability to appreciate certain poems has much to do with the difficult of scanning them. My ear hears feet, and is pleased by their regularity as well as deviance from that regularity. When someone tries something subtle, I lose the thread.

UPDATE 2: I like this.

UPDATE 3: I thought I would pull Mr. Mullenix's recommendation out from the comments. I like the poem very well, but I keep looking for structure that isn't there. To me, it reads like an incomplete sestina--which is oddly charming, but I want two more stanzas and tighter key words. This reflects more on me than on the poem, which is lovely.

UPDATE 4: "I do not like this country's women."