There are considerably few poets who are ever able to pull this off. It happens more frequently in music than in poetry. The chances are not good for a poet to find an agent to take him in and make him rich. The odds are not even as good as the odds of a sports loving kid becoming a pro basketball star. Most of us can name more really famous living basketball players than poets.
Poetry demands a higher degree of literacy and has a smaller number of applicants.
It is also a less popular activity than basketball, so there are fewer consumers. That means fewer applicants, fewer consumers and worse odds. But poets deal daily with the impossible, and are good at turning obstacles into bulwarks. There are several tracks to success in poetry, and each has different marks of success. Some of these are teaching, writing for personal therapy, writing verse for greeting cards, use of poetry for communication on the Internet, leading public workshops, reading at coffee houses and publishing best selling poetry books.