To quote art critic J. Lebowski, that is, like, your opinion, man.

Both laymen and a number of literature figures and literary critics have appraised Bukowski's work.

So there's that, it's not like it's some guilty pleasure or something only undiscerning crude fans appreciate...

>At least punk songs have some kind of emotional resonance, or at the very least a good hook, you know?

There's all kinds of emotional resonance in Bukowski's work. And I'm not great fan of him either, in fact don't even have a single book (while I have of tons of others poets of the era).

Just a random pick:

  the flesh covers the bone
  and they put a mind
  in there and
  sometimes a soul,
  and the women break
  vases against the walls
  and the men drink too
  much
  and nobody finds the one
  but keep
  looking
  crawling in and out
  of beds.
  flesh covers
  the bone and the
  flesh searches
  for more than
  flesh

Then you either overestimate your sevent grade poems, or you wrote great poems in sevent grade and should have done something with them...

But, I think the more plausible idea, is that you have a different sensibility and find them beneath you, but more from a moral and/or formulaic judgement and a prejudice about how a proper poem should be...

To make an easy analogy, that could be the same way a "rawk" fan can't understand electronic music, and thinks it's all rubbish, even it's Aphex Twin and not Skrillex.