Who reads poetry? We know that poets do, but what about the rest of us? When and why do we turn to verse? Seeking the answer, Poetry Magazine since 2005 has published a column called “The View From Here,” which has invited readers “from outside the world of poetry” to describe what has drawn them to poetry. Over the years, the incredibly diverse set of contributors have included philosophers, journalists, musicians, and artists, as well as doctors and soldiers, an iron-worker, an anthropologist, and an economist. This collection brings together fifty compelling pieces, which are in turns surprising, provocative, touching, and funny.

Who Reads Poetry offers a truly unique and broad selection of perspectives and reflections, proving that poetry can be read by everyone. No matter what you’re seeking, you can find it within the lines of a poem.

Fred Sasaki edits Poetry magazine’s prose feature “The View from Here,” from which the essays in this book are gathered. He is the art director of Poetry magazine and a gallery curator at the Poetry Foundation. He authored Real Life Emails, a book of deluded emails, and the zine series FRED SASAKI’S AND FRED SASAKI’S FOUR-PAGER GUIDE TO: HOW TO FIX YOU. In 2004 he founded Chicago Printers Ball, an annual celebration of poetry and printmaking. He is also cofounder of the Homeroom 101 pop and subculture show.

Don Share is the editor of Poetry magazine. Among his twelve books are Wishbone, Union, and Bunting’s Persia; he also edited a critical edition of Basil Bunting’s poems, named a Book of the Year by the Times of London and the New Statesman. Miguel Hernández, his book of translations, was awarded the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize and Premio Valle Inclán. Other books of his include Seneca in English, Squandermania, and The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of “Poetry” Magazine. Share received a VIDA “VIDO” Award for his contributions to American literature and literary community.

Ari Banias is the author of Anybody, a debut collection of poetry, published by W.W. Norton in 2016. He is the recipient of the 2014 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and the 2012 Campbell Corner Prize. He has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program. Banias lives in Berkeley.

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990 and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. His first poetry collection Unaccompanied, was published in 2017 by Copper Canyon Press. Zamora is a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and is a 2016 Ruth Lilly/Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. In 2016, Barnes and Noble granted him the Writers for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets Campaign. He lives in San Rafael.