Every few years the National Endowment for the Arts measures how much literature we’re reading. In 2008, for the first time in 25 years, the number of Americans reading literature went up. But this new interest is entirely due to more people reading fiction. The number of Americans reading poetry has actually declined. There is a stereotype that all poets are crazy, and historically some of them have been. But slaving away at a discipline few people seem to care about can seem a little, well, insane. Eleanor Boudreau spoke with one poet to see what makes him do it.
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