I think it might have been an essay by Roethke that I read long ago (though maybe it was by someone else) saying that it was important to approach every poem with complete respect for the poet and with the expectation that the poem will be serious and important and that the poet has succeeded in all respects. Of course, you may find that these initial expectations are not met, but it's important to start by generously bestowing the benefit of the doubt on the poet and his poem.
I wonder sometimes how many of us actually do this with every poem we read. Does a poetry editor at a fancy magazine really turn to every new submission by an unknown poet with an excited expectation of reading great poetry? Or with a grumpy assumption that this is one more piece of junk that will have to be transferred to a SASE with a printed rejection slip?
And when we encounter a poem in a workshop, online or otherwise, does the fact that we are in a workshop cause us to assume from the start that there is something "wrong" with the poem, something that needs fixing, which then proves to be a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I'm sure this has something to do with why we tend to like new poems by poets we already admire. We turn to their new work with the thrilled expectation that they've done it again, and lo and behold, we are totally receptive if in fact they have.
So I agree with the idea that we should read other people's poems generously, open to the possibility that what we are about to read may be something we'll want to commit to memory some day.
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