Andrey's questions about poems (split from the intro thread)

[AndreyGaganov]

^ Is that what you think of guys like novelists? Do you think they waste words?

I said that the difference between a poem and a novel is akin to a bullet to the head or cancer. They both kill you.

You've said more than that. You said: "In prose you sift through wasted words to get meaning, ... ." Hence the point I've made about novelists.

You said you can't get ANY meaning out of poems, eg, they are nothing but a waste of words.

These are not the words I used, nor do they precisely convey what I meant. What I had in mind was the perceived need to obscure the meaning of the poem. This does sound like an irrational stance, true (I should have thought it through the first time I posted on this forum). However, my main concern remains to be: why metaphors?

It's not so much a reading comprehension problem as it is my problem with what is at the foundation of poetry. My argument is this: why does a poet feel the need to use metaphors when we already have prose? Why contrive a confusing piece of literature and make the reader work hard on its meaning when it is only supposed to convey an idea? What practical  advantage do metaphors have over simple terms?