I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.– Russell Baker

I think Mr. Baker was talking about modern free verse, not this poem which really is a sort of a coded message. I copied the poem and the acompanying explanation from this website which has lots more information about teaching and appreciating poetry.

<> ! * ‘ ‘ #
^ ” ` $ $ –
! * = @ $ _
% * <> ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , SYSTEM HALTED

The poem can only be appreciated by reading it aloud, to wit:

Waka waka bang star tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang star equal at dollar under-score,
Percent star waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Pipes curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.

The above poem appeared in the May/June 1990 issue of Infocus magazine and has since been floating around the net. The original authors were Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese of Calvin College & Seminary of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
A poll conducted among Infocus readers had established “waka” as the proper pronunciation for the angle-bracket characters < and >, though some readers held out resolutely for “norkies.