Poetic License Taken

I'll offer this post as an introduction into the way I view poetry. Poetry is a soft subject, one I consider not at all worth study. It doesn't save lives, it doesn't cure disease, it doesn't really DO anything useful. The fact that college students (at least those attending a liberal-arts university, pursuing any degree) have to study some form of it (depending on their professor) grates me to no end, but that isn't the purpose of what I'm trying to tell you here.
For me, poetry has become similar to food: its all up for interpretation people. Personally, I like chicken wings and tacos and beer, foods modern cuisine critics seem to frown upon (though for some reason beer has come into a little light). For all I care, the critics can shove it. I eat what I want to eat, and, when that premise is extended to the arts, I view/read/do what I want to do. There's a reason for my major, Computer Science. I consider the soft sciences useless; sociology, liberal arts.
I'll read what I want to read, write what I want to write, and analyze what I want to analyze. When I read a poem, don't ask me about the auditor or the speaker, those people/terms are totally irrelevant to me. Don't ask me about alliteration or metaphor. And for god's sake, get rid of the stanzas (Italian, English...the list goes on). Categorizing a poem by its verse and rhyme scheme only moves people farther and farther away from the reading of poetry.
I see a Jackson Pollock 'painting' and I wonder "How in the hell is that art?" I read the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and feel the need to carve my eyes out. That poem, to me (and to me, me is the most important source of poetic criticism) is the driest, most boring, convoluted piece I have ever read. I'm sure the professor's insistence on spending two+ hours on that one poem didn't help it's case. But don't take my word for it! Mathematical proofs are proofs! They are universal, but poetic criticism is subjective to the person giving it. Do me a favor: read a poem for yourself. Like it? Read it again, and apply it to you. Hate it? Burn the fucking thing. Don't like what I have written here? That's cool too, you probably don't constantly have awe-inspiring pearls of wisdom drop from your lips either.
What I'm trying to say is this: the study of poetry had killed it for me. Forcing concrete, finite terms like stanza, rhyme scheme, alliteration, metaphor (and a host of other terms as well) attempts to attach a mathematical-like scheme to poetry. Poetry is not mathematical.
It is Art.