Does meaning matter in poetry?

How is that a real question? Of course, poetry needs meaning! As does every other form of art.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, those words are the reason art is loved. It's not just the fact that art is words, but what the words mean to the reader that gives art meaning. Poetry is no different from other works of art in this manner. The words of poetry speak in the same way as the words hidden in a picture, they call out to the soul and evoke feeling and understanding. Meaning is everything in anything. We all thrive to have meaning in life, and that is why meaning matters.

Now comes the difficult question: “How hard is too hard to decipher meaning?” I almost feel like that is impossible to answer. No two people are the same. Some people will interoperate a poem or peace of art as one way, and others another. If a poem is written for a specific person, that person may be the only one who could interoperate the true meaning. If a poem is written to the public, it shouldn’t be made too difficult to understand. Then again, there are old poems that seem almost imposable to interoperate today that were simple to understand in past generations. If an author is writing with purpose, the difficulty should be based on the who it is written to, and nobody else.