Fans of high-minded pop singers like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Billy Corgan like to talk of lyrics as poetry, and to celebrate their favorite performers as not only musical geniuses, but literary lights as well. But such trite assessments may be selling the art of poetry short, says Robert Everett-Green. “Rock poets who break out of their medium and into published poetry are still rare… And yet the cachet of calling oneself a poet continues, even as poetry declines as a subject of public interest.”