I just got done with The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. It was an interesting book on poetry, with a brief life story twisted into it. I was sometimes a bit bored with descriptions of everyday life, but I enjoyed the narrator, Paul Chowder, and his little oddities throughout the novel. He has some interesting ideas on what constitutes good poetry (especially haikus, that part was great) and he's a slightly over-weight, middle aged man with problems keeping everything together. Paul is obsessed with the idea of the "four-beat verse" being the "soul" of English poetry. He mentions Ogden Nash so I automatically liked him. It was a really good book for anyone who likes poetry and, because most of his terms are overly technical, I imagine it would still retain its ease of reading for those who have no interest in poems.