One result, Mr Gioia says, is a generation of professional poets with little experience of life outside full-time education.

ECONOMIST: MODERN VERSE: Poetic injustice | The

Many other African-American jazz legends also rose to popularity in the beginning of the 1900s, wrote jazz critic and historian Ted Gioia in The History of Jazz.

BBC: The birthplace of jazz

"It really requires some significant leadership, and especially private-sector leadership, " said Robert Gioia, president of one of the largest charitable organizations in western New York, The John R.

WSJ: Reaching Outside The Ivory Tower

Mr Gioia remains unrepentant.

ECONOMIST: MODERN VERSE: Poetic injustice | The

In 1991 Dana Gioia, a poet (and former marketing manager for General Foods), set off a fierce debate in American poetry circles with an attack on American academia for turning poetry into a smug, producer-driven lobby, concerned only with its own survival and indifferent to the fact that it had alienated a wider audience.

ECONOMIST: MODERN VERSE: Poetic injustice | The