ABSTRACT
The unpopularity o f poetry. H ow m any people really like poetry enough to read some regularly through adulthood ? A university or school teacher cannot fairly judge from his circle of acquaintances, as they are likely to be more intellectual and better educated than the average. Yet as to these, one wellinformed w riter states th a t even am ong the intellectual élite it is rare to find a person who reads poetry for pleasure.1 1 have known even two professors o f foreign languages o f whom this seemed to be true, so far as English poetry was concerned; and one distinguished professor of psychology told m e th a t poetry ‘m eant nothing’ to him . T he actual proportion of the whole population who read poetry it is impossible to discover, bu t here are a few suggestive statistics.
