Over the last few decades, universities have become the home of contemporary poetry in the United States, where nearly every major poet is also an academic. Poets, like other professors, teach classes, publish in tiered journals, sit on committees, undergo tenure review, secure grants, win prizes, attend conferences, and oversee graduate students. The result is that poetry, whatever else may be said of it, is a recognized industry of intellectual activity within university culture. It constitutes an academic discourse not unlike history or sociology.