Q. (2) What is the poets demand in the poem “about me' ?
Answers
The poet admits that she does not like poetry and that there are many more important things. However, if one reads it with “contempt” one might discover something genuine in it. Things like hands, eyes, and hair show their importance not because of the fancy interpretations one can build on them but because they are “useful.” When they are no longer understandable then they do not matter; we cannot admire “what / we cannot understand.”
The poet gives examples of things that are "useful": a bat in a cave looking for food, a horse, a wolf under a tree, a critic’s face twitching, a baseball fan, a statistician. One should not dismiss business documents or textbooks either.
There is a distinction that should be made, though. Just writing about these things does not constitute genuine poetry. When “half poets” write of these subjects, they remain trivial; they have not captured the essence of these things because, though they may attend to literal things, they are not yet "literalists of the imagination." When they can finally give us “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” then it will be real poetry. Until that happens, if you defy the half poets, and demand poetry constituted of “raw material” and "genuine" feeling, you can officially be deemed “interested in poetry.”