"Poetry" begins with the speaker confessing their "dislike" of poetry. This is a rather ironic opening statement for a poem! Surely the speaker's relationship to poetry must be more complex than pure "dislike" if they're writing a poem about it. Still, these first four words are one of the most famous openings in 20th-century poetry, and they set up a nuanced, challenging reflection on the art form.
The speaker adds that "there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle." "Fiddle," in this context, means nonsense or deception. At the same time, it brings to mind the musical instrument, suggesting that musicality can be part of poetry's deceptiveness. Perhaps the speaker thinks poetry needs to do more than just sound nice.
Indeed, the speaker says they read poetry "with a perfect contempt for it." This is hyperbole; if the speaker really felt "perfect contempt" for poetry, why would they bother reading it? This exaggeration suggests that the speaker is feeling fed up with poetry, until, that is, they remember that there is "a place for the genuine" in it. The speaker is caught between feelings of poetry being a load of bologna and the belief that actually there is something real about it after all.
Line 1 is end-stopped, and feels straightforward and emphatic. Lines 2-3, however, are enjambed:
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Notice how long line 2 is, and how the enjambment makes the line feel as if it's simply overflowing into the next one. The choice to break the line after a preposition makes the poem feel a little more prosaic; ending the line on an image or punchy phrase would be more expected. This unconventional choice signals, perhaps, that poetry doesn't have to be perfectly chiseled in order to convey something "genuine."
In fact, the poem's form is quite experimental. Like other modernist poets, Moore continually pushed the boundaries of what poetry was allowed to be in her era. The poem's use of syllabic meter (in which lines contain a certain number of syllables rather than stresses) feels simultaneously loose and structured, rhythmic but not tightly musical. Most of the poem's stanzas are sestets (but the third stanza is an exception), and its lines range anywhere from 4 to 22 syllables. The poet playfully flouts traditional ideas about what a poem should look or sound like, suggesting that style isn't ultimately what makes a poem matter.