I'm not gonna ask a person on the street for their opinion on poetry for the same reasons that I won't ask a random person on the street for their opinion on how to best handle nuclear policy. Chances are they haven't given the subject more than a cursory thought, let alone are equipped with the knowledge or experience to come out with a well thought out, constructive answer. If I want someone's opinion on poetry, I'll seek out someone with a background in literature or art. If I want someone's opinion on nuclear policy, I'll seek someone with a background in science or law.

I dunno. I think that's just the whole argument that art is subjective. When I was in college, I loved the shit out of everything from Basho to Ogden Nash, while my art teacher love surrealist prose poetry like Joe Wenderoth's Letters to Wendys and half my classmates were sporting semis over guys like Saul Williams. None of us agreed with each other's taste, but each of us knew enough that it was wrong to say others were "wrong" in their tastes.

mk does fucking amazing landscapes. I would never want a landscape hanging up in my house. He probably doesn't care too much about embroidery, where I wouldn't hesitate to buy an embroidered piece if it caught my eye, if only to later give it away. However, he'd probably know a good piece of embroidery when he sees it and that's because while written, audible, and visual arts are subjective, if you even half know what you're looking at you stand half a chance of telling if it's amazing, passable, or utter crap. If someone needs to go out of their way to convince you that a piece is amazing, chances are it's really not. In short, not accounting for taste, just like you don't need a refined pallet to recognize bad food and you don't need traditional education to recognize bad art.

As for breaking rules, poetry is as much of a tool for analyzing language as it is for analyzing the world. If you want to write something and "break the rules" of conventional writing, call it a poem and no one will say shit. Not that it really matters, because as far as I'm aware, the conventional wisdom seems to be that outside of a formal setting, no one gives two fucks for any rules in language, conventional, unconventional, formal, colloquial, or otherwise.