One of the reasons I fear and despise poetry is I have no ear for the subtle
musicality of language, only the most basic stuff that even a child would catch, like alliteration and assonance and rhyme.
This often distresses me, when an eminent critic quotes a passage of Milton or whoever and writes how self evidently wonderful it is, when to me it looks (and even sounds) not particularly wonderful at all.
Perhaps the meaning of words (the web of associations each might conjure) obtrudes for me - I can certainly hear more "music" in foreign languages, which mean absolutely nothing to me. I often wonder what English must sound like to a non English speaker.
My favourite poetry is therefore either full of ideas that interest me, or observations/emotions I relate to, or obviously rhymes.
I can certainly see why people might find obvious rhymes and regular rhythms boring and stifling.
I was thinking, reading some of the poems in this thread last night, how I much prefer that translation of the Rubiyat (not a short poem) with all its clever little alliterative bells and whistles, it's reassuring rhymes and most of all its big clonking philosophical statements.
A thicko, in short. A philistine. The purest imaginable.