Anyone who dragged through Chaucer and Milton, Dickinson and Plath in any standard English-lit course has got to be surprised by this news: Poetry reading is up in America while reading books for pleasure is down slightly.

So says the National Endowment for the Arts, which on Wednesday published the results of a study, "U.S. Trends in Arts Attendance and Literary Reading: 2002-2017."

The study shows the percentage of adults who read books (those not required by school or work) fell to 52.7 percent in 2017, compared with 54.6 percent in 2012 and 56.6 percent in 2002. The percentage of adults reading fiction (novels and short stories) dropped from 45.2 percent in 2012 to 41.8 percent in 2017.

The NEA considers the slight dip in overall reading to be statistically insignificant, especially since Americans today have an unprecedented range of options to choose from during their free time.

In fact, the number of Americans who read books for pleasure in 2017 totaled more than 126 million – far outnumbering those who read poetry or plays.

But the data on poetry reading are significant. Poetry reading surged up a remarkable 76 percent, to 28 million people in 2017, with the numbers especially strong among young people. The share of 18-to-24-year-olds who read poetry more than doubled between 2012 and 2017.

Female poetry readers showed notable gains, increasing from 8 percent in 2012 to 14.5 percent in 2017. And Hispanic poetry readers increased from 4.9 percent in 2012 to 9.7 percent in 2017.

Endowment officials are mostly cheered by the results of the study, which also found that adult Americans are renewing their interest in museums, arts festivals and the performing arts.

No one was more delighted than the Poetry Foundation, the Chicago-based organization formed out of Poetry magazine to promote poetry in American culture.

“Poetry is vibrant and alive, largely thanks to the energy brought to it by young poets making incredible work and finding new paths for the art form to explore," exulted Poetry magazine editor Don Share. "We are heartened and thrilled by these results, as they prove that poetry is not only thriving but more vital than ever.”

So why is it happening? The reasons probably cover a variety of factors, says Sunil Iyengar, director of research and analysis for the NEA, which conducts the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts in partnership with the U.S. Census.

"We believe that national and grassroots programs such as (the NEA's) Poetry Out Loud might have played a role," Iyengar says. "It’s also highly possible that greater availability of social media and technology platforms for reading, writing and performing poetry may have contributed to the rise in poetry readership nationwide."

Poetry Out Loud, co-sponsored by the NEA and the Poetry Foundation, is a poetry recitation contest that has attracted more than than 300,000 students from more than 2,300 high schools around the country.

Poetry sales in recent years have increased, driven at least in part by the rise of such Instagram favorites as Rupi Kaur and Tyler Knott Gregson. Poetry slams also are popular.

Reading has long been linked to a variety of positive social and economic benefits, which is one of the reasons the NEA exists. Besides the NEA Big Read and Poetry Out Loud programs, the NEA gives grants to publishers and presenters, and fellowships to individual writers as part of its mission to promote public engagement with the arts.

"We see really exciting creative efforts through our grants, writers-in-the-schools programs, fellowships to poets and our large national initiatives, which turn many thousands of students and readers on to poetry each year, sometimes for the first time," says Amy Stolls, the NEA's director of literature.

The study also showed a reverse of years-long declines in attendance at museums and performing-arts events, whether jazz concerts, stage musicals or dance and ballet. But attendance levels in most categories remain below those from 2002.

Between 2012 and 2017, the share of adults who attended visual or performing arts activities grew by 3.6 percentage points to 132.3 million people, representing nearly 54 percent of the U.S. adult population.

Most of the increase came from the share of adults who visited art museums or galleries, which grew by nearly 13 percent from 2012 to 2017, totaling 57.5 million people in 2017.

Contributing: The Associated Press