I'm not quite sure why so much news this month begs for editorial comment. Contrary to the PR, it's not the first annual National Poetry Week. Republican times, too. No surprise here.
Publishers mostly find their poets under academic rocks.
When those slugs set out on reading tours, they bore vast numbers of folk. If academia and its bookworms were a robust growing movement in the western world, they'd be selling books. And if they supported performance poets, we'd be selling videotapes. Boredom is a hard sell. But the universities just can't relax their controlling grip, and the publishers feel oh so comfortable in bed with them.