Poetry = Hard?

I have the following conversation on at least a fortnightly basis:

Mr S: So next lesson we're going to be studying a really great poem called-
Student: Oh no! Not poetry!
Mr S: You don't like poetry?
Student: No, I hate it.
Mr S: Why???
Student: Because it's so hard!

Why is it hard? I can think of a few good reasons:

1. Poets seem to like using long, obscure words that very few people outside of an Oxford college know without needing to use a dictionary, like 'perfidious'. And especially in short poems, there aren't many words to read so if you miss the meaning of one or two key ones, you're completely lost.
2. They also seem to like talking about ancient Greece - why not talk about somewhere else, like Poland, or Grimsby? I read this as a teenager and my instant reaction was, "What the heck is this about?". Actually, that's still my reaction.
3. They often put words in strange orders - I do appreciate the irony in the fact that if you guys put your verb at the end of the sentence you usually get red pen on your work, whereas if Shakespeare does it then that somehow makes it okay.
4. It's written by people who usually know lots of stuff about lots of things, but the rest of us mere mortals might well not know what they're going on about.

HOWEVER...

Not all poetry is hard.

---

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams*

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which

you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

---

I always imagine this poem as a note on a fridge door held up by a magnet (as a side point, check out what you can do with fridge magnets).

The reason it is so simple is because that's what the poet was trying to do - he was part of a movement called Imagism, where the whole point was to use some ultra simple image or thing as a starting point to explore poetry and the world of ideas.

What does it mean? Well, the question is, what does it mean to you?

It goes to show, though, that when they put their minds to it, poets can write poems that are simple yet effective!

*How cool is this guy's name?