[New-Poetry] Van Doren and Frost

[Bob Grumman]

Chris Lott wrote:

> I'm all for it but there's not a poet on the planet that could fill a
> medium sized room here, Billy Collins and Rod McKuen included.

Certainly not more than once or twice a year.

> Well, maybe Jewel or the guy from Smashing Pumpkins could :)

Serious poetry is not popular, that's a fact.  Unless you want to call pop 
song lyrics and rap serious poetry.  Television devotes 0.001% or its air 
time to it (you think there will ever be an American Idol sort of show set 
up to single out an unknown young poet for stardom?), radio maybe three or 
four times that.  Newspapers rarely mention it.  A few "high-brow" culture 
magazines do discuss it but few give it the space they give movies.

But so what?  Serious mathematics is less popular.

--Bob