Yall are mostly stodgy critics and it bugs

[Luckieman]

The validity of this argument entirely depends what you mean by 'stodgy' and 'conservative'.

IMO there's a basic rule. Because the written word is a vehicle for communincation, any piece of writing should make sense to the reader on some level without their having to struggle for that meaning. If not, they quite reasonably won't give it the time of day. I hope that's not stodgy or conservative.

I wonder if this qualification would include nonsense poetry, which certainly is poetry and enjoyable but meaning-compromised?

Though I guess "She's just being silly" is a level of sense...

Even nonsense poetry has to have some anchors to meaning if it's going to work at all. Even if the words don't connect with each other in a sensible way, each word has intrinsic meaning, so images arise in the mind of the reader. I don't personally approve of handing the main burden of interpretation to the reader, but it can result in at least subjective meaning. Total nonsense (strings of random letters) just passes in one eye and out the other.