It’s perhaps not surprising that American poetry’s A-listers have come, of late, to espouse sincerity as both writing practice and a way of discoursing about writing. Plenty of developments seemed to clear a path for this new wave of earnestness. There was Marc Kelly Smith, arguably the first “slam” poet; the proliferation of spoken word, or “performance” poetry; and the subsequent transformation of the open mic into the gestic, roaring soapbox that it is today. There was, beginning in 1996, National Poetry Month, which drew inspiration from Black History Month and Women’s History Month.