[8] The previous month, the song reached #1 on the Billboard easy listening (adult contemporary) chart, where it remained for one week.

Nevertheless on the American Top 40 radio broadcast of September 13, 1980, host Casey Kasem would allege that Snow herself had advised his show that Browne was her Poetry Man.

"[12] Snow would in later years recall that although her completed debut album would indeed be "dubbed a jazz album" with its hit single "Poetry Man" overtly "light, ethereal and jazzy",[13] (Phoebe Snow quotes:)"I never intended to be a [career] jazz artist:"[9]"Back when I was really starting to play guitar and sing, I listened to the Rolling Stones mostly, and Led Zeppelin and Cream.

"[22] WAPO music critic Joe Brown would describe the title cut of Something Real as "'Poetry Man' revisited...[The earlier] song's ingenuously adulterous protagonist has wised up in a decade.

In 1997, Zap Mama, an African-Belgium based group, delivered a rendering on their album, Seven, which included a dialog of sorts with Spearhead's Michael Franti playing the Poetry Man himself.

In 1999, "Poetry Man" returned to the Adult Contemporary chart in a cover by Hawaiian female vocal trio Na Leo Pilimehana, which peaked at #24.

In 2007, Queen Latifah recorded a cover version of "Poetry Man" that was included on her Grammy-nominated album Trav'lin' Light.

in 2014, Canadian vocalist Jaclyn Guillou recorded "Poetry Man" on her contemporary jazz album, "Winter for Beginners".