Two reasons why people "hate" poetry and literature:

1. "Of course I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or metre of the "Raven".  The former is trochaic - the latter is octametre acatalectic, alternating with heptametre cataletic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrametre cataletic.  Less pendantically, the feet employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long syllable followed by a short, the first line of the stanza consists of eight of these feet..." Edgar Allan Poe (1846) The Philosophy of Composition
2. Harold Bloom How to Read and Why.  Hey Bulldog you write shit like this and then wonder why people wanna curbstomp intellectualism?  Title your book, How to be a smug Ivy League prick and take and the fun and joy out of what was popular entertainment of the time by painting a veneer of elitism all over it.

Before all you literature fans start jumping up and down, yelling, 'Kill!  Kill!  Kill! please realize that I do respect and love literature but my eyes are crossing at attempting to read something this dry.  This is like math with words.  I'm going to go console myself with some nice safe history.  Mmmm, history.  Mmmm, Chicago Manual of Style.

p.s.  MLA can suck it too.