A poetry only bookstore just opened up in Boulder, Colorado. The W.B. Yeats inspired Innisfree Poetry Bookstore & Café is only the third poetry specific bookstore in America – the other two being Grolier in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Open Books in Seattle, Washington.

While extremely pleasing, it also points to the problem of poetry’s place in contemporary American society. More and more communities are becoming “book deserts” as bookstores close up and leave many towns and cities without a single bookstore within an hours drive. While they can probably find some books at the grocery store or at Target, where will they have the chance to browse shelves of poetry?

All three of the bookstores listed above are in “blue” communities. Will poetry be the sole domain of progressive communities, while red states see their opportunities to encounter poetry dwindle? Of course, this occurring because of demographics. Red states and communities tend to have higher rates of illiteracy, higher unemployment, and lower incomes. Blue states and communities tend to be just the opposite.

Also, two of the three bookstores exist in college towns. Could a new poetry bookstore even open up outside of a college town now? Could any city or town in Alabama, South Carolina, or even my home state of Florida support such an institution?

Don’t get me wrong. I am overjoyed that Innisfree has opened. I hope one day to make a pilgrimage to all three bookstores. But is poetry in America doomed to be like opera, deeply loved by its limited and scarcely growing following (among which I include myself), but scarcely able to impact the nation at large?