Poetry is a world I am by and large excluded from experiencing in general. The reasons are fourfold: (1) I am literal-minded and think in terms of abstract concepts and syllogisms. Thus, like Kant I am unable to call visual images to mind most of the time. It follows that I could read and indeed memorize a poem, but that would be tantamount to memorizing ten license plate numbers in a parking lot and stringing them together. (2) Due to the aforementioned reason, the ideas strung together in concreto in poems require too much of a wrenching of my brain to be enjoyable--i.e. "he was feeling bad and so tricycle." (3) The first two reasons combine with a third, which is that poetry typically requires an appeal to emotion rather than reason, but my default mode of thought is reason rather than emotion. It follows that this reduces both sensual and emotional stimulation, which means that most poems do not arouse me. (4) As a general rule, poetry is unscientific and gains its legitimacy through excitation of the senses and emotion, which are counter to enlightenment thinking. Enlightened thinking, therefore, consists in placing reason and knowledge above belief and the whim of the moment, which is the business of poetry, among other things. From this it follows that the truth-seeker ought not own poetry books or hang fancy paintings in his house that merely induce him into endarkenment rather than enlightenment. (Note: the exception to this is art that appeals to the intellect rather than purely the senses and emotion. Therefore, listening to Mozart is acceptable, but listening to Wagner is not. Similarly, realist poetry and prose is acceptable from an enlightened point of view, while others are forms of endarkenment).