The entire book publishing industry is funded by sales by mystery and romance. Make those easier to produce, and you lose the overhead to publish poetry, in much the same way that most newspapers don't have the overhead to fund the next Seymour Hersh disclosing the next My Lai or the next Abu Ghraib.
I was told that most wineries don't make a lot of money from selling their higher-end wines; they produce them because they establish the reputation of the winery in the eyes of influencers (wine critics, restaurant wine buyers, snobs, etc.) -- those who know wine well. So, while the sommelier might think poorly of, say, Mondavi's "Costal" label, he could still offer it as the budget selection on the by-the-glass list and feel good about it due to the quality of Mondavi's higher-end offerings (ignore Opus One as most consider it an over-priced way to impress clients at business dinners). Also, when a consumer who just wants something white and fruity sees the lower-end Mondavi labels, he can recall what his wine snob friend had to say about the brand's better stuff. Perhaps publishing houses and newspapers act similarly?
But doesn't the flip also occur. Now poetry has less overhead to publish, so poets can publish their works w/o fighting a publisher.
Although I do wonder, who buys and reads poetry. I can honestly say that in my entire life I don't think I know one person who does. I know a few people who write poetry as a hobby, but I've never actually met anyone who reads it. And I can't recall ever seeing someone on the subway reading a book of poetry.
I just bought Mary Oliver's Swan[1] and it's quite a great read.
Also, I wrote a paper in grad school comparing the Brothers Grimm's Fairy Tales to Anne Sexton's Transformations[2] as Homer compared to Sappho, and they are a thauma widesthai, if you like Grimm stories reinterpreted by a slightly unstable Bostonian feminist.
I hate to poke you like a speciman in my lab, but when and where do you read poetry? In the evening do you read for hours or is it something you read on occassion while waiting for the microwave to buzz?
One of the benefits of working 9-5 at a company that makes a million dollars a day is that I have my weekends free. So I bike to Fresh Pond[1], to the Arboretum[2], or elsewhere, and read. It's like meditation, and it improves your vocabulary.
Sounds romantic. As an undergrad I set out to read Dante's Divine Comedy in Italian one summer. What could be a better use of a summer -- and I'd learn Italian at the same time. To this day I still haven't read it, nor do I know Italian.
And oddly it does please me to know that there are people reading poetry simply for pleasure.
You may want to give it a shot now. I'm translating one of my favorite Jules Verne novels from French to English using vim and google translate (http://voyagesextraordinaires.tumblr.com/ if anyone cares). The machine does a fairly crap translation and I then puzzle over the French until I figure out what it means.
The entire book publishing industry is funded by sales by mystery and romance. Make those easier to produce, and you lose the overhead to publish poetry, in much the same way that most newspapers don't have the overhead to fund the next Seymour Hersh disclosing the next My Lai or the next Abu Ghraib.