It’s a private source of shame that I don’t get poetry. There are those who don’t care much about poetry and don’t give it a second thought. But for me, the problem feels personal.

To be clear, I give little attention to other abilities I might lack. Some of them have far more social capital than poetry does. Like the hand-eye coordination that’s useful for catching balls. To be without this skill was not exactly an asset during school-going years, but I now feel quite unaffected by those who feel the need to chase something on a beach.

Then there’s maths. Yes it might be useful to be more accomplished with numbers, but I manage quite adequately with rudimentary skills and am happy to concede that many others are better.

But my inability with poetry feels like a mistake that needs to be addressed. I should be one of those people who are moved by poetry and who get it quicker than others. I’m an English major who extols the virtue of a good letter, I seem to be wired for creativity and language rather than for the world of the left brained. But somehow, I was passed over when the sensitivity-to-poetry gene was distributed.

William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry.” For Dylan Thomas, “Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle…”.

Because I still struggle to find a poem that makes me feel this way, I google “the most moving poems of all time”. The list of ten includes Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Dark House and First World War poet, Wilfred Owen’s Strange Meeting.

I blink a few times to check if I might be tearing up but my heart remains unmoved. So instead, I search for “hatred of poetry.”

How curious to discover that there are so many like me who feel the same. A veritable community of indignant poetry haters who also feel they should get it but don’t.

“It’s because we were taught at an early age that we are all poets simply by virtue of being human,” explains Ben Lerner, author of The Hatred of Poetry.

The Hatred of Poetry is not the kind of book you should turn to if what you’re looking for is a SparkNotes equivalent to make poetry more accessible. Among other honours, Lerner is a Fulbright Scholar, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the writer of three books of poems and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.

So, the chances are good that he’s the kind of guy who gets poetry.

What he does offer is an original and comforting take on how our “hatred of poetry” is both universal and timeless.

Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point for his thesis about its importance. He examines poetry’s greatest haters (beginning with Plato, who claimed that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead their youth) and some of its greatest practitioners, including Keats, Dickinson and Whitman.

For poetry outsiders like me, it’s important to recognise that Lerner’s “Hatred of Poetry” is of course not because he doesn’t understand it, but rather, because he does. His pain is derived from having glimpses of a timeless universal connection and then being plunged back to earth again when he inevitably slips back into reality.

In the timeless words of Obi-Wan Kenobi of Star Wars, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

So I kept searching, reading and speaking to people who really love poetry. In my sojourn to find a cure, I was able to find three possible remedies.

Firstly, it’s about the way we were taught. Some of us might have been blessed with English teachers who inspired us, but in truth, teachers like John Keating, who Robin Williams famously played in Dead Poets Society, are rare. The hours we spent being taught to analyse words and rhythm might have been useful for passing exams, but they were a whole lot less successful at instilling a lifelong love of poetry.

Perhaps it’s not too late to still experience the romance of poetry if you missed out on your own John Keating. You could try poetry-infused movies like Bernado Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty or Bright Star, the love story between John Keats and his muse, Fanny Brawne. Like the keys to the love-locked padlocks on the bridge in Verona in Letters to Juliet, movies – like teachers – also have the ability to unlock a different way of thinking about poetry in the world.

The second cure requires one to be more fatalistic. Because it turns out that there’s actually an intelligence known as poetic intelligence.

Shuki Gutman is a poet, educator and lecturer in poetic intelligence at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He describes poetic intelligence as “the ability to look at both our inner and outer worlds and to give expression to them in words. It allows people to focus on their feelings, thoughts and desires… it helps us dive into our subconscious and articulate images and thoughts, accurately and meticulously, using knowledge, symbolism and language.”

In other words, an ability with language or writing has little to do with poetic intelligence. I might enjoy language and what it can achieve, but the ability to connect words with other worlds is another gift entirely, and it’s rare. Therefore, it’s far more useful to accept this and to regard people who have this gift as guides who are able to see the world differently, rather than as reminders of our own deficiencies.

The final cure is another one most of us can work with. And that’s about learning to be more aware of our own human emotions and to notice what it is that moves us. Whether through art, music or poetry, great artists are able to reach out through the ages by making us feel the deep emotions that they too felt at the time of composition.

Rather than wondering why we don’t understand the literary greats, we should notice instead when a few sentences touch us in some way – however fleeting that might be. If appreciating poetry is about that which elicits emotion and passion, it’s a good idea to let go of snobbery and notice instead that which makes us feel deeply.

Perhaps this is part of the reason why social media poets have gained popularity in the last couple of years. Canadian Instagram poet Rupi Kaur has more than 3 million people reading her posts daily. John Roedel was catapulted to fame as a result of a series of Facebook posts in which he talks to God.

But the poem that speaks to me is a simple, childhood verse by A. A. Milne called The Dormouse and The Doctor. It’s about a little dormouse who lived in a bed of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red) and who loved his wonderful view.

Along comes a doctor who knows better and prescribes digging up his garden and replacing all his favourite flowers with chrysanthemums (yellow and white)

It ends with the dormouse closing his eyes and pretending to see his favourite flowers again.

The Dormouse lay happy, his eyes were so tight
He could see no chrysanthemums, yellow or white.
And all that he felt at the back of his head
Were delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red).

There’s something about a little dormouse longing for his blue delphiniums and shutting his eyes against the sea of prescribed yellow that works for me. And even though I can’t feel my toenails twinkle, I’m somewhat relieved to notice an undeniable prickle behind my eyes.