Thus we come full circle - the act of creating poetry need not be difficult. BUT something that can be created easily is difficult to discern mastery within. SO mastery within poetry is (seemingly) arbitrarily assigned by elitists. THUS lots of people hate poetry - an easy thing whose merit is arbitrarily assigned by elitists.

Lost in all this is the fact that people who aren't interested in a literature class for its own sake aren't generally interested in poetry either. So when they're forced to regurgitate some canned wisdom about why Aldo Leopold is a genius but all Kipling is doggerel, it sticks in the craw.

Because sure. Anything you say is poetry is poetry. But poetry that matters? That's determined by people whose standards they won't even explain to you because they know it'll only make you mad. So trust us when we say this poem means all this stuff and spew our answers back at us because we don't want you in this class, either, nerd, and if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that you shouldn't be here.