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Welcome to Grolier Poetry Bookshop
Poetry is honored every day at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, the oldest continuous poetry book shop in the United States. We stock over 15,000 current volumes of trade, small press, and university publications as well as books related to prosody, poetry markets, and spoken word CDs.
Up Coming Events
Thursday, June 27th
7:00 P.M.
Wes Hazard Reading at
The Grolier Poetry Book Shop
Wes Hazard is a stand up comic and poet based in Boston.
A 2011 grad of Emerson’s MFA Program. He performs all over the city and has appeared in the
Boston Comedy Festival. He recently featured at theCantab Lounge.
His chap book is Month of Sundays
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Friday, June 14th
6:00 P.M.
The Grolier Presents
City of Angels
A Stand-Up Reading of
Ben Mazer’s Verse Play
Read by Ben Mazer and Several Poets
Tickets available at the Grolier and
on line at Event Brite
http://grolierpoetrybookshop.eventbrite.com
Suggested Donation $5.00
The Grolier Poetry Book Shop and the Democracy Center had a wonderful event on May 9th with four poets
Khin Aung Aye, from Burma
James Byrne, From England
Adrie Kusserow, From Vermont
and Zeyar Lynn, from Burma
Adrie Kusserow and Zeyar Lynn
Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Paris Review and Poets and Writers
From The Paris Review
The Paris Review Writes About The Grolier
From Poets and Writers
Ifeanyi Menkiti Talks about Boston’s Literary Scene in Poets and Writers
Spring Berman’s book All Time Acceptable winner of the 2012 Grolier Discovery Award now in stock at the Grolier
The Grolier Poetry Book Shop would like to thank all of our customers for a wonderful Holiday season.
We Have some exciting events coming up. We will be posting our reading series for the new year shortly.
Sring Berman’s book All Time Acceptable won the the 2012 Grolier Discovery Award We now have copies of the book in stock.
On Poetry
Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a book called What is Poetry?
Here are a few examples from the book:
“it is the voice /within the voice of the turtle”
“Poetry is news/from the frontiers/ of consciousness”
“Poetry is all things born with wings/that sings”
Following some quotes from notable poets
“Well, write poetry for Gods sake, its the only thing that matters.”
-ee cummings
“Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep”
-Salman Rushdie
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”
-Plato
Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.
– Dylan Thomas
I will end with a quote from Robert Creeley
“Poetry is our final human language and resource. The Grolier is where poetry still lives, still talks, still makes the only sense that ever matters.”
-Robert Creeley
Spot light on Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky walked into the Grolier the day before his reading at The BlackSmith House Poetry Series and carefully went through every book on the shelves. Of course he found some treasures that only he could find. A translator himself Kaminsky has a sharp eye for poems in translation.
Kaminsky was born in Odessa, the former Soviet Union in 1977. He is tall, lanky and very youthful looking. His youth has not prevented him from winning many awards. His book Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) won the Whiting Writers award, The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, The Dorset Prize, and The Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry Magazine . Kaminsky was also awarded the Lannan Foundation’s literary fellowship in 2008. In 2009, poems from Kaminsky’s manuscript Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry Mgazine’s Levinson Prize. Kaminsky was in town to read from Dark Elderberry Branch: poems of Marina Tsvetaeva Branch ( Alice James Books) Kaminsky and Jean Valentine worked together to translate Tsvetaeva’s poems.
David Ferry said of the book Dark Elderberry Branch “This is a radiant work. They chose the right poet to fall in love with, and her poems responded.” The reading at the Black Smith House was indeed radiant. Kaminsky and Valentine both seemed to be in tune with Tsvetaeva. Kaminsky read in Russian his voice singing and Valentine read the English.
“You must write as if God were watching you” -Marina Tsvetaeva.
“To know/ the spirit is my beloved. To arrive on earth-swift
as a ray of light, or a look.
To live as I write:spare-the way God asks me-and friends do not.”
Marina Tsvetaeva
Kaminsky has also translated Polina Barskova a book called This Lamentable City Poems of Polina Barskova, he is the editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins,2010) He teaches at San Diego State University.
Tags: poetry, translation
Poetry around town
November and December have been great months for poetry. David Ferry won the National Book award for his book Bewilderment David read form Bewilderment at the Grolier and many other venues around town.
Local poets Elizabeth McKim and Thomas O’leary read at Grolier and the famous Charles Coe sang a tune for us.
We also hosted readings for local poets Ann Mirabile Lees reading from her chap book Night Spirit, Mark Pawlak of Hanging Loose Press read for us from Go to the Pine:Quoddy Journals 2005-2010 which is a beautiful poetry collage about the Maine coast, and George Kalogeris who has a new book of paired translations Dialogos.
Kathleen Spivack’s new book With Robert Lowell and his circle was a hit with the crowd at both the Grolier and the Harvard Book Store. The Grolier and the Harvard book store had standing room only and lines outside. Elizabeth McKim, Lloyd Schwartz, Frank Bidart and many other poets were at the store for a lively discussion of poetry from the 1950′s to the 1980′s.
Keith Jones read at the Grolier from his new book Surface to Air Residuals of Basquiat.
The Blacksmith House hosted Jean Valentine and Ilya Kaminsky for a reading of the translation of Marina Tsvetaeva. This is a great time for Poetry and Poets.
Ben Mazer’s play City of Angels was read at the Grolier with the great Mark Schorr directing and a cast of nine readers.
Readers of City of Angels
Ifeanyi Menkiti and Keith Jones November 30 2012
Kathleen Spivack and Ifeanyi Menkiti