With many twists and turns, right from defining and deconstructing what is and what is not a poem, to contentious aspects of context and meaning, the river of verse may take ages to reach the sea of readership.

The path from poet to reader is oftentimes so ardous, most poets end up sating themselves with a rather small readership, often patient friends and helpless family. 

A small circle of like-minded might even go as far as meeting a few times in poetry clubs to share their work with varying levels of critique, appraisal or even indifference. 

Most such poetry groups are a privilege of large cities and not accessible to all dabbling in poetry. 

The eventuality of all this makes for a sad fact- poetry is mostly read by poets only.