Why everyone hates poetry

on World Poetry Day, I try to answer why poetry is much-loved but much-hated.

Perhaps it was the question “What is the poet trying to say” nagging us in examination halls that made us strip poetry of its wonder, turning it into a puzzle to be solved instead of a pulse to be felt in our veins.

Perhaps it started when we were hit by the impermanence of things, by the sadness of someone leaving, that we went quiet. Days later when we…