Yesterday, I had to go up to Cambridge for a meeting. While I was up there, I stopped in at a couple of bookstores in Harvard Square, and on a whim I walked over to see if Grolier Poetry Book Shop was still open.

Grolier Poetry Book Shop is one of the last holdovers from a different era. Twenty years ago, there were more than fifty small independent bookstores in and around Harvard Square. Many of those were specialty bookstores, like Mandrake Books that sold only philosophy and fine arts books, or the store on Arrow Street that sold only Asian books, or Grolier that sold only poetry books.

Grolier was special even in those days — it was perhaps the only bookstores in the whole country that sold nothing but poetry. The only other poetry bookstore I knew of was City Lights in San Francisco, but City Lights sold non-poetry books, and most of its poetry had some relation to the Beats. Grolier carried all kinds of poetry. Everyone who cared about poetry went there: people would travel great distances to go to Grolier; walk in there on any given day, and you would be likely to run into a published poet, or at least a young struggling poet.

The last time I was in Grolier was a year ago. Louisa, the former owner, had not been well for quite some time. Store hours had grown irregular, so when I walked by last spring and saw she was open, I went in. Louisa looked ill, the shelves were half-empty, and for the first time ever I walked out of the store without finding at least one book of poetry to buy.

So yesterday, I walked by on a whim; more out of habit than anything else. Miracle of miracles, Grolier was open. Not only that, but the shelves were full again. I climbed up the familiar steep stone steps and walked in.

“Where should I leave my pack?” I asked out of reflex (Louisa vigorously enforced the rule that all bags and packs should be left behind the counter).

“Over there, if you want to,” said the pleasant, relaxed man at the counter, someone whom I had never seen before.

We wound up talking at some length. Daniel is the new general manager of the store; he’s managing it for the owner; sales have been pretty good so far; he’s a professional musician, a trumpeter, who’s taking a break from performing. We both agreed on several things: the level of music education in the general population is declining; we wish Barney Frank was one of our senators rather than in the House of Representatives; Philadelphia is a wonderful city; the war in Iraq is absolutely insane.

Daniel apologized that he did not have the bilingual edition of Portuguese poetry that I was looking for, tacitly acknowledged that in the old days Grolier probably would have had it, and said that it was taking time to build up the stock to the old levels. I managed to find the other books I was looking for, and a few others I wasn’t looking for: Countee Cullen’s collection of African American poetry, a collection of poems by contemporary Chinese poets, the collected poems of Maya Angelou, Given by Wendell Berry, and Audre Lourde’s The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance.

What a relief: Once again, I’ll be able to make regular trips to Grolier to get my poetry fix. Once again, a cultural landmark is open for business.

Grolier Poetry Book Shop: Daniel Wuenschel, General Manager. 6 Plympton Street, near Harvard Square, Cambridge (off Mass. Ave. behind the Harvard Book Store). Phone: 617-547-4648, email: grolierpoetry AT verizon DOT net.

Grolier’s hours:
Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 am to 7 pm;
Thursday – Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm,
closed Sunday and Monday.