What's the maximum famouseness poets ever reached in the USA? As someone that grew up in french speaking Canada, I honestly have no idea. In russia, poets during their lifetime were mega famous at some point. Like celebrity level famous. Was there a period like that in US history too? Or were they all just famous amongst intellectuals and then just canonized to be taught at school? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/books/03poets.htmlVoznesensky’s generation of poets, which included Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Bella Akhmadulina, declaimed their work in sports stadiums to overflow crowds. A moment presented itself — the relative artistic freedom of the early Khrushchev era — and these poets pounced on the microphone. As Mr. Voznesensky put it, with a punk lip curl: “The times spat at me. I spit back at the times.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay enjoyed supposedly quite a lot of popularity among the "common people" in the 1920s and 1930s based on a biography of her which I read a while back. However, in discussing poetry and popularity with a poet or two here or there, I've been cautioned that even the accounts of her popular following from that time may be exaggerated, and that she wasn't quite as ubiquitous. Here's an index to a book on the subject I found; it's JSTOR, so if any of you have free access and want to, might be worth it. (But I doubt any of us truly have the time?)