Is it Me? Or is it Them?

Having been on poetry sites for most of about three years now, I have read a lot of verse written by armchair scrawlers, some of it good, some of it quite bad. It has gotten to the point, though, where it's all starting to read the same to me.

I'm not sure why this is. Maybe there's a certain homogenizing that takes place as everyone tries to describe how sad they feel from lost love in free verse. Maybe it's because the topics all seem to distill down to about five common themes with most everyone.

All I know is that my mind and eyes are tired from either trying to make sense of what's been written or trying to find some particular verse that really stirs something deep inside.

The odd thing about it all is there are so many people on these sites that continuously praise (with high praise, I must say) these same folks I am reading. It's as if they all see something I can't seem to see, or feel something I can't seem to feel. So it makes me wonder if I've just gotten a bit too jaded to be able to experience the same things they do when reading these pieces.

Is it all really that good? What am I missing?

You see, there is poetry that does to me what I described earlier. It touches something inside me, makes me think or experience it in ways that have a deeper meaning. Some examples I have pulled from poems include:

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

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And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

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Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

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they speak whatever's on their mind
they do whatever's in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

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Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

Of course, these were written a long time ago by some well known names in the world of poetic literature. So I guess there's a good reason why they stand out. But you would think that with everyone being a poet these days, someone would rise above the ground-level clutter with something that soars free from the shackles of cliche, doggerel and just plain dull poetry.

Some have.

Blaze by Carol Brandt
Winter in Waiting by Emil Donatello
Nightscapes by Keith Bickerstaffe

These are a few that stand out in my mind. You won't find any of these people on the pages of any books on the shelves of Borders, but they have produced fine work. There are others as well, but they are too few and far between to remember.

Maybe that's the way it's always been. Only a small percentage of the whole will have any real merit.

If that's the case, then, once again, why are all these people being praised by others on the sites?

It's gotta be me. I guess I'm just too dense to "get it."