Painless poetry

Poetry doesn't bite. Nor does it talk back (most of the time.) So why are so many people  afraid of a few lines of verse? David Lucus, the poetry columnist for the Michigan Daily, insists that more people would go gaga for verse if it was presented as a thing of pleasure, not a puzzle to be solved:

Most kindergarteners love poetry because the sounds of the words delight them. They even learn the alphabet by learning to recite a poem that almost anyone reading this can still remember. But too many high school graduates have given up on the poetry in their textbooks because we’ve taught them that those poems are riddles to be solved instead of something to be enjoyed. No wonder rock‘n’roll and hip hop speak to teenagers in ways adults fail to understand. No one’s asking them to figure out the hidden meaning of their iPod playlists.