I suppose most of us have known poems are strange ever since we were infants being put to bed with lullabies like “Rock-a-bye baby,” or were children being taught prayers that begin “Our Father who art in Heaven….” The questions soon arose: What idiot put that cradle in a tree? And what’s art got to do with my Daddy-God? But this kind of strangeness we got used to. And later, at some point in school, we asked or were made to ask again: What is a poem?

For example, in high school my English teacher handed me Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and said I had to write an essay about what it meant. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the assignment, and the poem became the object of my hatred. The poem seemed willfully not to make sense. I soon found every poem to be an irritation, a blotch of words, a ludicrous puzzle that got in the way of true understanding as well as true feeling.

Unless you are a poet or writer, it’s likely that poems have apprehended you less and less as the years have passed. Occasionally, in a magazine or online you see one—with its ragged right edge and arbitrary-looking line breaks—and it announces itself by what it is not: prose that runs continuously from the left to the right margins of the page. A poem practically dares you not just to look but to read: I am different. I am special. I am other. Ignore me at your peril.

And so you read it and too often become disappointed by its blandness, how it can be paraphrased with an easy moral, such as “this too shall pass” or “getting old sucks”—how essentially it’s no different in content than most of the prose around it. Or, you become disappointed because the poem baffles initial comprehension. It’s inaccessible in its fragmented syntax and grammar, or obscure in its allusions. Nevertheless, you pat yourself on the back just for the trying.

How many of us believe poetry is useless? How many of us don’t even care to ask the question, “Is poetry useless?”

Comparatively, a poem moves a reader, physically or emotionally, very rarely. Other media are much better at bringing us to tears—television, the movies. And if we want the news, we read an article online or glean our Twitter feed. If we want something between tears and the news, we just stare at our children when they ask a question that sounds more like a statement: “Why do grown-ups drink so much beer?”

But seriously, isn’t a poem a home for deep feelings, stunning images, beautiful lyricism, tender reflections, and/or biting wit? I suppose so. But, again, other arts or technologies seem better at those jobs—novels offer us real or imaginary worlds to explore or escape to, tweets offer us poignant epigrams, painting and design offer us eye candy, and music—well, face it, poetry has never been able to compete with that sublime combo of lyrics, instruments, and melody.