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EUAN KERR: Todd Boss sits at a high table in a corner of Nina's in Cathedral Hill. It's a noisy place, what with the espresso machine blasting the caffeinated conversations, and the occasional wailing child. But this is where Todd Boss likes to write. He says he became a poet after his wife commented something he'd said sounded like a poem.

TODD BOSS: And because I had her attention, I wanted more of it, and I just kept writing. To woo women is as noble a reason for anyone to do anything.

EUAN KERR: Of course, it takes a little more than that to become a successful poet, particularly one who attracts the attention of a publisher like W.W Norton. And Boss admits he took an unusual path to learning more about his craft and making connections.

TODD BOSS: By lying to a bunch of publishers and telling them that I was reviewing books, which I had never done, they started sending me review copies and offering me interviews with pretty important people.

And because I took those interviews seriously and had every intention of doing reviews of those books, those people began to ask me about me and they got invested in my poetry as well.

EUAN KERR: Todd Boss says he writes poems about ordinary aspects of life. His collection, Yellowrocket, is divided into sections about growing up on a farm, then about his adult life, the joys and worries of having children, and the stresses of his marriage.

TODD BOSS: My wife and I have a very turbulent relationship and always have. And it's the challenge of knowing and loving the other that has always drawn us to one another.

EUAN KERR: He says things are going well now, but that wasn't always the case, and he ended up writing a lot of poems as a result. He launches into one piece called Don't Come Home.

TODD BOSS: "Don't come home" ranks first among the worst things someone you love can say. Not even the common "I hate you" does the damage "don't come home" will do. You can live with "I hate you", same as you live with the past. You abide it. "I hate you", in fact, can be worth coming home to, like anything built to last.

EUAN KERR: Boss isn't reading here, he's reciting. He says he can do this for at least half the poems in Yellowrocket.

TODD BOSS: I like to say I have them by heart, because the idea of poetry is to get at the heart. It's not to get at the memory or the head. It's to get somewhere else in the place where you store your meaning and the things that mean a good deal to you.

EUAN KERR: Todd Boss is very pleased to have his book out, but he knows that only gets him so far.

TODD BOSS: I feel like I've arrived, but there's no one on the pier to wave and cheer for me. I'm all alone out there.

EUAN KERR: To be blunt, most Americans don't read poetry. But Boss says that doesn't mean they don't appreciate it. In fact, he thinks people unknowingly seek it out, very often in the form of songs on the radio.

TODD BOSS: The reason that they don't know it's poetry is because it's not packaged as poetry, but it's lyrics nonetheless and it's words nonetheless.

EUAN KERR: Boss also says many people get their poetry from the pulpit, listening to words of poets written thousands of years ago. He says he believes to most people, poetry is the province of academics and therefore inaccessible.

He wants to change that to make poetry the words of ordinary people in everyday places. As the poet laureate of Nina's, he has been organizing readings in the cafe to offer a venue for some of the many local writers.

TODD BOSS: I think that we are at a crossroads in this culture. The election of a poet, Barack Obama, to the presidency of the United States is a signal that just about everyone is aware of but can't quite articulate.

EUAN KERR: Barack Obama? Poet?

TODD BOSS: I think so. I think that's why they respond to him. He didn't get up there and say, "I have a poem for you," but he got up there and started speaking poetry. And it was sufficient enough to move them and inspire them.

EUAN KERR: So with the poets taking over the presidency, Todd Boss says it's a good time to be a poet. Euan Kerr, Minnesota Public Radio News, St. Paul.