We’ve had killer fiction on our radar screen for a while. Now here comes the tragic tale of… killer poetry!

A former teacher was detained in Russia’s Urals after being accused of stabbing an acquaintance to death in a dispute about literary genres, investigators said Wednesday.

The 67-year-old victim insisted that “the only real literature is prose,” the Sverdlovsk Region’s branch of the Investigative Committee said.

The victim’s assertion outraged the 53-year-old suspect, who favored poetry, and the dispute ended with the ex-teacher stabbing his friend to death, investigators said.

Ridiculous! I cannot imagine any circumstance in which arguing over the world of ideas can possibly be… wait, what?

This is not the first time high-brow disputes have led to bloodshed in Russia. In September, a man was shot in a line for beer in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don after enraging a fellow beer drinker with his views about the work of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.

I stand corrected. Kant – that’s different! Fellow beer drinkers be warned: Don’t mess with my views of Immanuel Kant!