poetry?

So, I never really considered myself a lover of poetry.  Even the just the word 'poetry' conjures up memories of elementary school limericks and haikus and ideas of people on stage reading words dripping with emotion or feeling.  Yuck.  Even reading poems in a book just never did it for me.  I never felt like I understood poetry.  When the word 'poetry' arises, usually I try to avoid it. 

However in going through much of my old writings, I realized that quite a bit of it actually is poetry.  Song lyrics are poetry.  Hip hop and rap is poetry.

I have a dear friend with whom I would share much of my writing and read hers a long time ago.  Recently, I read some of her current writings, but before I read them I thought, "Ah, this is poetry."  I thought they were nice, and that was it.  I didn't connect with them the way I did a lot of her older stuff.  But again in retrospect, a lot of her old writing back in the day was poetry.  So what is it about the word and idea of 'poetry' that turns me off?

Now that I'm thinking about all this, I think by definition poetry is words with depth.  However, the type of depth conveyed is different every time depending on the author and the style.  Sometimes it's emotional, sometimes spiritual, sometimes humor, sometimes intellectual, sometimes physical movement, and so on.  I think I'm attracted to certain types of depth in words more than others.  As I would guess most people would be.  I guess I just never really thought about it like that before.  I shouldn't be so quick to judge.  I might actually enjoy it.

Here's a piece of poetry that I'm particularly enjoying today.