I would say it's the other way around... Appollinaire's calligrames were even published at all and made it into anthologies because they are amusing little items (which he never published, by the way - they are a posthumous work) by a poet/playright/novelist whose body of work is otherwise relatively important, more than enough to justify publishing these after his death (Appollinaire's cultural importance is linked a lot to the influence his works and ideas, automatic writing notably, had over the early 20th century French intellectuals and artistic movements, like surrealism and and even the cubist painters with whom he was friend (he wrote about the cubist movement). His work are mostly read as part of understanding better the artists they influenced - André Breton for instance - rather than as "great works" in their own right nowadays).