Picking Apart Peculiar Poems

Sadly, the only positive experiences I have had with poetry stem from my early childhood and as I grew older I began to dislike poetry more and more. The poems that I still enjoy to this day are poems by Shel Silverstein , and poems that play with words and are stimulating to the senses such as this poem by Shel:

There's a Polar Bear
In our Frigidaire--
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there--
That Polary Bear
In our Fridgitydaire.

All other poetry does not appeal to me however. The reason? My high school english teachers are the biggest factor. Once in high school, my english teachers dove into complicated poems and forced the class to think deeply about the meaning. Many times they did not teach us anything about the author of the poem, and it was difficult for us to understand why the poet was writing something the way they did. For example, if my high school teachers had taught us more about the life of Emily Dickenson, I might have been able to understand her poems a little better. I also feel that it is sometimes best to leave a poem alone. When you analyze a poem to death, I feel that it loses a lot of appeal. The words don't roll off your tongue quite the same way, and there is no mystery left in the verses. There are definitely benefits to understanding a poem, you can find things that you never would have noticed at a glance. But there is a fine line between understanding and enriching a poem, and picking apart a poem until there is nothing left to enjoy.