Poetry has been labeled a dying art for almost as long as it has existed: It’s not what it used to be, and nobody reads it. Shakespeare’s contemporaries wondered if English could ever equal Latin.

All the sands in the sea and I counted them well. He said he with a grin, “And not one more?” I answered him, “Now you go make sure.” Natalie Merchant’s two-disc album, “Leave Your Sleep,” is a ...