It’s really scary — there are fewer and fewer people who read even one novel in a year, much less a book of poetry — nobody reads poetry anymore. Like Dana Gioia claims, people used to.

Yes, people used to read it, but starting with modernists poetry became pruprosefully "difficult" and couched in obscure lit-theory. After modernism died, poetry moved from "cultural bohemia" into the university where its direction has been commandeered theorists and academics poets who who are pretty much its audience.