What if "poetry" is really prose? What if the division is nothing more than a created prejudice and that poetry and prose are as different as two people with different skin pigmentation?

If poetry were really prose, it would follow the conventions of prose. Metrical poetry would lack meter. Alliterative poetry would lack alliteration. Rhyming poetry would lack lines. Poetry with caesurae would lack caesurae, and so on.

But that’s a pretty useless “what if.”

It’s like saying, “What if light were really darkness?” or “What if silence were really sound?” or “What if color was really the absence of color?”

It’s nonsensical as a hypothetical situation. Given that it’s a self-contradiction that makes no sense, a paradox in the worst possible way, there’s really no point to moving onto the next question about a prejudice against poetry and prose. That would be skipping over the fallacy of hypothesis contrary to fact.