"Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it"

Prelutsky’s remark carries playful self-deprecation that doubles as a critique of poetic gatekeeping. By claiming he isn’t “smart enough,” he pokes fun at the notion that appreciating poetry requires specialized intelligence or academic credentials. The humor disarms, but the subtext is sharp: when poems resist comprehension, the fault may lie not in a reader’s intellect but in a tradition that equates opacity with depth.

As a renowned writer for children, he signals his allegiance to clarity, music, and immediacy, qualities children demand. Kids will not reward obscurity; they want delight, surprise, and emotional truth. The admission that he “mostly doesn’t get” adult poetry functions as an aesthetic credo: language should invite rather than intimidate, communicate rather than posture. It is less a confession of inadequacy than a choice about values, intelligibility, joy, and shared experience.

There is also a democratic impulse at work. Many adults carry anxiety about poetry, trained to treat it like a riddle with a single correct answer. By voicing bewilderment, he normalizes not understanding and grants permission to disengage from work that refuses to meet readers halfway. That stance respects readers’ time and feelings and acknowledges that art earns attention by offering resonance, not by demanding deference.

The irony is deliberate. Prelutsky, a master craftsman, hardly lacks verbal acuity; his “not smart enough” is comedic hyperbole that adopts a child’s candid vantage point. He implies that poetry’s worth is measured by how it lands, its humor, music, image, and heart, rather than by how many allusions one can decode. Difficulty can be rewarding, but difficulty without reward is a failure of hospitality.

Ultimately the comment is generous and quietly radical. It challenges hierarchies that privilege obscurity, champions accessibility without condescension, and invites both poets and readers to trust clarity, play, and genuine feeling as the highest forms of literary intelligence.