the new interest in poetry

"Nowadays people talk piously about 'the new interest in poetry,' but it's not altogether clear what they mean. More people, no doubt, are writing poetry today, with professional intent, than at any previous time in American history. It may also be true, paradoxically, that a smaller proportion of people are actually reading poetry than were a century ago. Nobody knows for sure; many express opinions."


peter davison (New York, NY, 1928), an excerpt from the article "Discovering" young poets. How some of the best-known poets of this century got that way, originally printed in the The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 281, No. 6, june 1998


Further reading:

The Atlantic Monthly's Fiction & Poetry Pages

Peter Davison's bio