what little fiction I read in school, I remembered long enough to get a grade and then promptly forgot.
as for poetry, I write it, but don’t usually read it.
I made the mistake of glancing at one of E. E. Cummings collections, it was the most unintelligible, childish garbage I have ever read.
Shakespeare, I’ll give you that one, (I prefer the movies)
Poetry, GOOD POETRY, should be taught and kids made to memorize it, as it once was.
You're being proud of being an uneducated lout?
Not all fiction is worth reading/knowing; however, much of it is! Not only are good. well written stories fun, you will expand your vocabulary, if you read older works, especially those considered to be "classics".
Heck, even the Sherlock Holmes books are written with such an extensive, beautiful vocabulary, that you'll probably need to sit with a dictionary.
I'm now basically only a non-fiction reader; however, I read /was read to, so much great fiction in my youth ( and remember it!), that I can well afford to not read fiction now and for the past many decades.
By NOT knowing this part of Western Culture, you help to destroy it. And many things will elude you, because so much of it is referenced in every day conversation and yes, in non[-fiction work.