Well, several others here have made a good point... there's no point in people who aren't interested reading it. But no doubt many people who think they aren't interested just haven't found the right poems yet, so yes, I suppose I do think it deserves a wider readership.

I can't claim I generally devote too much attention to a bookstore's poetry section... that is, I might check it out and even buy volumes, but it's not the first thing I go looking for, and I wouldn't be too upset if it was missing. I don't generally check out poetry the way I would other books, randomly looking at books that look interesting or authors that sound familiar. With poetry, I just see if by any chance the store has a poet that I like for a decent price.

Why would a bookstore have entire shelves full of Bibles, though? Even in the US (perhaps even especially in the US, where everyone already has one anyway), surely that can't be necessary.

I would. Multilingual poetry, as others said.

Because it allows for the expression of deep ideas and emotions in a simple, appealing way. And because it's one of the oldest forms of literature. And because it's probably the only genre of literature which one can appreciate to some extent even in languages one doesn't speak (that is, assuming the poem is read to you by someone who does speak said language).


Gates of Damascus (Flecker), Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge), No Second Troy (Yeats), lily has a rose (cummings). And many more not coming to mind or that I don't know the title of, see favourite poets.

In roughly chronological order: Sappho, Catullus, Hooft, Vondel, Flecker, Poe, Yeats, van Ostaijen, Achterberg, cummings, 't Hooft (not to be confused with the other Hooft).

There are many more that I'm sure I'd like if I read them, but I have yet to really read countless famous poets (Dante, Petrarca, Donne, Keats, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, the list is long).

Most of them in school. Poe, Yeats and cummings were probably more on the internet somehow, by looking up references or coming across their names somehow. Flecker was thanks to the quote from his Gates of Damascus that is referenced in the Agatha Christie novel Postern of Fate.

Well, all the Flemish/Dutch ones on the list you probably won't read anyway, or the Antique ones. As for the ones writing in English, though: the former three are at times perhaps a bit pompous or decadent by modern standards, but they are very good at what they do. Flecker writes most of his poems in rhyme, and still makes it sound like he's picked his rhyming words for their meaning and not for the rhyme. Yeats has some great images and lines that have remained in the collective memory (most notably "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold". cummings is radically different, with his refusal to use capitals and his use of simple words, but he too does it so phenomenally well.