Poetry Please?

Artrockers,

I confess, I have a guilty secret. I like Pointless ('Pointless is a game show shown on BBC One, hosted by Alexander Armstrong, with Richard Osman as assistant. It has been broadcast since 24 August 2009.' - thank you Wiki), I like Eggheads too but that's another story. There, I feel better for having got that off my chest. Anyhoo, there I was watching Pointless (while working very hard on Artrocker natch), one pair had been knocked out so we were down to three pairs of contestants, the next category was announced and it was poetry. Two lots of six poems were displayed on the board and it was down to the pairs to name the poet. Of the three pairs two were graduates in their 20s and the third pair were middle-aged housewives. The young graduates admitted to knowing none of them; "Byron is the only poet I can think of so I'll say Byron" - there was no Byron. The housewives knew them all, as did I.

What does this tell us? That poetry has no relevance for these young people? That they were science graduates and therefore hadn't spent much time on poetry? Maybe. Or does it signal a disconnect between these folks and their own culture? Perhaps it's an indication that education these days is crap, you decide. It worried me, no, that's too mild, it appalled me that our educated (?) hope for the future had only ever heard of one poet and couldn't name any of his works.

By now you're thinking "Well I'm no poetry expert myself, Tom's being very hard on these people, we aren't all English graduates" to which I say "Yes, but neither were the housewives, and they knew them all, non-graduates educated in a different age." But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, I don't remember all of the poems, but here's a list of those I can;

If...
The Charge Of The Light Brigade
Paradise Lost
The Waste Land
The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

How did you do? Was your answer to all of the above Byron? I'm guessing you got them all, not particularly taxing are they?
Maybe it's just me, maybe it doesn't matter, maybe poetry is esoteric and 'pointless', but I find it worrying that the flowers of our culture seem to be dying, am I alone in this?

Tom Artrocker