Do you read the poems in the New Yorker?

I admit it. I’m a huge fan of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, but I don’t read much other poetry. Not that I avoid it completely. I check it out from time to time. Like whenever I get my copy of the New Yorker, I’m drawn to the poetry (after I look over the cartoons, of course). But I can’t say I usually read many of the poems. I have liked occasional poems, but they’re more the exception than the rule. I’m not sure what the problem is. It’s not the lack of rhyme—I have no trouble with blank verse. I even admire a good prose poem (when it’s done well). I think there may be two things I struggle with. The first is when I get bored in the middle of a poem. If I’m reading and I don’t have any desire to go from one line to the next I feel myself thinking, why bother? (I get that feeling often when I pick up a poem by Walt Whitman—apologies to Whitman fans.) I’m reminded of an interview I saw with the children’s author, Maurice Sendak. He said the difficulty with children’s literature is that you have to keep children interested all the time so they’ll keep turning the page. If you lose their interest they’ll just throw the book against the wall—thwammo! I call it the thwammo factor. In poetry, for me, I guess it’s each line. The other is when I have trouble telling the difference between a poem and a prose paragraph. When something reads just like a short essay it’s hard for me to connect with it as poetry. Even if it has line breaks in the middle of sentences. To me, that’s just a printing convention. Which begs the question. What is poetry? It’s obviously not just something written in rhymes (that would leave out blank verse). It’s also not just something written in verse (that would leave out prose poetry). For me, an important part of poetry is the condensation of thought. Some image or idea concentrated into fewer words than can be conveyed in prose. But I’m not sure that’s always necessary. 

How would you define poetry?