Poetry is annoying. Most people think so, even if they're too polite to say it at a dinner party. You open a book, see a bunch of jagged lines and huge white margins, and immediately feel like you’re being tested on a subject you never studied for. It feels like a secret club where you don't have the password. Honestly, the hatred of poetry isn’t just a niche grievance for disgruntled high school students; it’s a storied, sophisticated, and deeply human tradition.
Ben Lerner, a celebrated novelist and poet, literally wrote a book titled The Hatred of Poetry. He argues that the moment we move from the "idea" of a poem—which is perfect and transcendent—to the actual words on a page, we are disappointed. We want the poem to save the world or perfectly capture a sunset, but all we get is a stanza about a red wheelbarrow. It’s a letdown. Every single time.
Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?
The Schoolhouse to Purgatory Pipeline
Most of us learned to loathe stanzas in a humid 10th-grade classroom. You know the drill. A teacher stands at the front, holds up a copy of Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson, and asks, "What did the author mean by the yellow wood?"
This is where the hatred of poetry begins. We are taught that a poem is a locked safe and the "meaning" is the gold inside. If you can’t crack the code, you’re just a failure. It turns art into a chore. Instead of feeling the rhythm or the weirdness of the words, we’re hunting for metaphors like they’re hidden objects in a Highlights magazine. It’s exhausting.
Marianne Moore, one of the most famous poets of the 20th century, famously started her poem titled "Poetry" with the line: "I, too, dislike it." Think about that. One of the greats admitted it’s tedious. She wrote that there are things that are important "beyond all this fiddle." She meant the pretension. The fluff. The way people act like poetry is a holy relic instead of just... words.
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The "I Just Don't Get It" Factor
Complexity is often mistaken for depth. Sometimes, a poem is just poorly written. Other times, it’s written for an audience of three people in a basement in Brooklyn. When the average person picks up a contemporary literary journal and sees a "language poem" that looks like a word search gone wrong, the hatred of poetry feels like a logical defense mechanism.
We hate feeling stupid.
But here’s a curveball: we actually love poetry when it isn't called poetry. We love it in Kendrick Lamar’s internal rhymes. We love it in the gut-punch of a Taylor Swift bridge. We love it in the slogans that move nations. We just hate it when it's bound in leather and sold for $28.95 under the "Classics" section.
There's a specific kind of frustration that comes from "difficult" art. If you watch a movie and don't understand it, you might call it "experimental." If you see a painting that's just a blue square, you might call it "minimalist." But if you read a poem and don't get it, you feel like the poet is laughing at you. It feels personal.
The History of Hating the Verse
People have been dunking on poets since ancient Greece. Plato wanted to kick them out of his ideal Republic because he thought they were liars who stirred up too much emotion. He wasn't entirely wrong. Poets are professional manipulators of mood.
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In the 18th century, satirical writers like Alexander Pope used poetry to mock... other poets. It’s a snake eating its own tail. The hatred of poetry is baked into the medium's DNA.
Why the Hatred of Poetry Persists Today
We live in an era of "The Skim." We consume information in 15-second vertical videos and headlines. Poetry demands the opposite. It asks you to slow down to a pace that feels physically uncomfortable. It’s like trying to drive 20 mph on a highway where everyone else is doing 80.
That friction creates resentment.
We also live in a time of "Instapoetry." You’ve seen it. Short, lowercase sentences about healing and coffee and heartbreak, usually accompanied by a simple line drawing. Purists hate it because they think it's "too easy." Casual readers hate it because it feels like a greeting card. It’s a lose-lose situation that fuels the fire of the hatred of poetry.
Breaking the Cycle of Resentment
If you want to stop hating it, or at least understand why you do, you have to stop trying to "solve" it.
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Real talk: most poetry is bad. Like, really bad. Just like most movies are mediocre and most food is just okay. The problem is that we’re told poetry is "High Art," so when we read a bad poem, we blame ourselves instead of the writer.
Stop doing that.
If a poem doesn't click in the first three lines, move on. Treat it like a Spotify playlist. Skip the tracks that bore you. There is no law saying you have to finish a poem by T.S. Eliot if it makes you want to nap.
How to Engage Without the Headache
- Read it out loud. Poetry wasn't meant to be processed by the eyes alone. It’s acoustic. It’s why Shakespeare sounds like gibberish on the page but makes total sense when an actor is screaming it at you.
- Ignore the "Meaning." Just look at the words. Do they sound cool? Does the rhythm remind you of a heartbeat or a train? Start there.
- Find the weird stuff. Look for "Erasure Poetry" where people cross out words in newspapers to make new meanings. Look for "Found Poetry." It doesn't all have to be about daffodils.
- Acknowledge the cringe. A lot of poetry is cringey. It's earnest. It’s raw. In a world of irony and sarcasm, that level of sincerity can feel gross. Acknowledge that feeling instead of running from it.
The hatred of poetry is often just a frustrated love for what poetry could be. We want it to speak for us when we can't find the words. When it fails to do that, we get mad. And that's fine.
Actionable Steps for the Skeptical Reader
- Audit your intake: Spend five minutes on a site like Poetry Foundation or Poets.org. If you don't like the first poem you see, close the tab. Do this for a week. Eventually, you’ll find one line—just one—that sticks in your teeth.
- Check out Prose Poetry: If the line breaks annoy you, read prose poems. They look like normal paragraphs but use the logic of poetry. It’s a great gateway drug for people who hate the "jagged edge" look of traditional verse.
- Listen to a "Poetry Slam": Watch a video of a performance poet. It’s a totally different beast than the stuff in the textbooks. It’s visceral, loud, and usually pretty funny.
- Write a "Bad" Poem: Seriously. Write the worst, most cliched poem you can think of. It takes the power away from the "Elite" version of the art form and puts it back in your hands.
The goal isn't to become a scholar. The goal is to stop feeling like an outsider to your own language. You don't have to love poetry to respect the fact that sometimes, prose just isn't enough to describe how it feels to lose someone or fall in love or watch the sun go down over a strip mall. Use the hatred as a starting point. It's at least an emotion, which is more than most people feel when they look at a spreadsheet.