We're starting to get more clarity on what "it" might be. It seems like "it" is something you'd be able to read. Given that, and given the pretty obvious title, we're going to conclude that our speaker is talking about… (wait for it) poetry. We know; Sherlock Holmes would be proud. So, our speaker is down on poetry. Yeah, incredibly hard for us to believe, too. Like you, we think that poetry is the best thing since sliced bread, and in some cases way better (we're looking at you, Wonderbread).
Still, somehow our speaker can read it with "perfect contempt," a flawless kind of hatred that must mean she's just super-down on poetry… unless…
We say "unless" because of that "however" in line 3. So, sure she's drinking mad Haterade about poetry, but it seems like there may be a saving grace.
And it turns out that this saving grace is the fact that "one" (whoever that might be, usually just an abbreviation to mean "someone" or "anyone") can find "a place for the genuine" in poetry.
Well, that sounds like a good thing to us. It's like a prize at the bottom of a cereal box, only instead of cereal we're reading poetry. And instead of a plastic doohickey, we find something real (genuine), not fake or useless.
It's not clear what that might be, but it seems like maybe our speaker is not so full of dislike as we first thought. Let's read on for more on this genuine article…