A review by Hugh Fox of a book about the former owner of a famous all- poetry bookshop in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. Some of the great poets of the 20th century frequented the joint.-------------------------



Louisa Solano: The Grolier Poetry Bookshop.
By Doug Holder/Steve Glines
2006; 23 pp; Pa; Ibbetson Street Press
25 School St., Somerville, MASS. 02143.
$10 or order at http://www.lulu.com


The main body of this little book is Doug Holder interviewing the owner of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop just down the street from Harvard Square, a bookshop totally devoted to poetry and one of the key-spots in U.S. poetry life
50+ years.
Solano reminisces a lot about the visitors to her bookshop, like Robert Lowell, Octavio Pass, Seamus Heaney, as well as the whole poetry ambience of
Cambridge over the years, Creeley and Ginsberg and Kerouac in Cambridge. Very short and pithy remarks. You'd love to see Solano expand her whole vision and
turn her memories into a five hundred page vision of what poetry was in the old days.
Solano's memories are supplemented by other short sketch reminisces of other poets like Lifshin, Deborah Priestly, Richard Kostelanetz, and Marc Widershien. Some unexpected little insights, like Grolier's influence on Lifshin as
poet: "As a teenager, I went to the store often, before I began to write and then even before my first book...." (p.9)
In March of 2006 the store was sold to Nigerian poet Ifeanyi Menkiti, a professor at Wellesley, but when I visited it in November of 2006, Solano was still there, and , in spite of her ill health, the store was still very much alive/thriving.

Hugh Fox/Ibbetson Update/Jan 2007 * Hugh Fox is a founding member of the Pushcart Prize, and the author of over 80 books of poetry, translations, etc... His memoir "Way, Way Off the Road..." is a personal history of the small press and is available through http://lulu.com .