I've been a high school English teacher for twelve years, and I notice my students struggle more with poetry than with novels or short stories. We spend weeks on Shakespeare and Fitzgerald, but when I ask them to interpret a single Emily Dickinson poem, many freeze. Why do we treat poetry as this obscure, difficult art form when it's actually the most direct expression of emotion? Is the problem in how we teach it, or is poetry inherently harder to process for modern readers who grew up on visual media?