leveller-you make me think of Walt Whitman, who was, in at least the minds of some, both America's Greatest and America's Worst Poet, depending on whether his piece offered the colorless pleasure of language and liquid versification(he could be truly appalling in this regard), or if he'd gone beyond that to move and touch in a special and recognizable way...etc.

As to the "what is poetry?" debate, like war, if it must come, it must come. However, I take some hope that it may not come.

It is a slim, and poorly founded hope, perhaps, but in following answers.yahoo.com, where posters grind out uninformed, ill-considered, and often wrong answers with lightening speed, I have noticed that questions relating to poetry, particularly it's interpretation, are the lonely old maids at the ball.

So the popular aversion to poetry may save us.