Brilliant or Lunatic

The other day in class we discussed the fact that some authors just seem to go on rambling in books and poems about pointless crap that doesn't make any sense. Only to have their work read later on by a person that makes some random connection between their work and then thinks their brilliant. What are literature and english? Why do we bother to learn this stuff? I think it's pointless and we should spend more time learning other subjects that make sense without comparing abstract ideas that some lunatic happened to have. However, this subject is very open and that is just my opinion on it.