"Poetry," said William Wordsworth, "has never brought in enough to buy shoestrings." Neither has Poetry (circ.
5,000). In all its 43 years as a bellwether of U.S. belles-lettres, while printing such "firsts" as T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Carl Sandburg's Chicago, the monthly has struggled along with account books that would never scan. Last July Poetry seemed finally about to die. But last week, in poetry's biggest rescue operation since the Greeks went after Helen, Poetry piled up enough money to buy a carload of shoestrings.
The hero...
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