Perhaps my e-mailbag runneth over this month simply because Potter and Poetry have distinct, magical qualities, which elicit thoughtful and passionate reactions. People--readers, booksellers, writers, publishers--care about the two Ps and say so. Reason enough to highlight a few noteworthy responses to the recent Harry Potter and National Poetry Month columns.
Jeffrey Inscho, marketing manager for Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Pittsburgh, Pa., wrote that "we’re launching an online/real world scavenger hunt website (Harry Potter Pittsburgh, countdown tracker up now) on June 1. The final clue that participants receive will be an invitation to reserve their copy at JBB, which gains them VIP treatment at our HP7 party. We anticipate this to be a really beneficial tool, framing JBB Pittsburgh as the Pittsburgh HP7 authority."
Virginia Duffey reported that Page One Bookstore in Albuquerque, N.M., is "selling vouchers at 20% off the full retail price of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, advertising our traditionally big release-eve party, and a stub from the voucher will be entered into a drawing for great prizes like an iPod Shuffle, Dragon-head wizard staff, Alivan wands and other Harry Potter-related gift items. The only way one can be entered in the drawing is to buy their HPVII from us."
According to Elisabeth Grant-Gibson, Windows a bookshop in Monroe, La., "is selling the book at full price (as always) and working on another great Harry Potter Pajama Party. We've also started a Hogwarts Study Group, which is meeting one time for each of the first six books to thoroughly examine the question 'Severus Snape: Hero or Villain?' None of our study group members have read the Mugglenet book about what might happen in Book 7."
Is there any bookstore that can resist Harry's siren song? "We won't be stocking this last Harry Potter and neither did we stock any of the previous titles," wrote Sherri Israels of Watermark Books on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. "The best reaction to this 'fray' is to stay out of it completely. We don't have to deal with the vagaries of supply and demand on these ludicrously over-hyped 'entertainment items.' We just keep on selling good books to intelligent readers day after day. (Our store is a Harry Potter-free zone, much appreciated by our clientele.)"
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"And life is, I am sure, made of poetry," Jorge Luis Borges contended in This Craft of Verse. "Poetry is not alien--poetry is, as we shall see, lurking round the corner. It may spring on us at any moment."
Penguin rep Meredith Vajda lauded the Poetry Month efforts of Mary Shadoff, bookseller/buyer at University Bookstore in Seattle, Wash., who has "spearheaded their celebration of poetry for the last eight or nine years, maybe longer. Each year, Mary solicits favorite poems from other booksellers at the main store . . . and puts together a chapbook that is used as a giveaway to customers and as the centerpiece of their in-store displays. Penguin has supported this project with co-op advertising for the last four or five years. . . . There is also an evening during the month where local poets read and there’s an open mic time for the public. Mary is a hero to her bookselling associates (and to me!) for the time and effort it takes to pull this together."
Elaine Bleakney, National Poetry Month coordinator for the Academy of American Poets, noted the efforts of Michael A. Mart, "an independent bookseller from Long Island and one of the poetfans we selected after a nationwide search for individuals engaging with poetry in their daily lives. After 34 years of selling books in Port Jefferson, N.Y., Mart developed poetryvlog, a website to support video streams of poetry readings."
And Shawn Wathen of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Mont., said he "just wanted to contribute to the discussion on poetry. It must, especially in the U.S., be a labor of love and responsibility. When I think of its lack of widespread support, Czeslaw Milosz's preface to A Treatise on Poetry springs immediately to mind." He sent me the poem, which ends: "Novels and essays serve but will not last. / One clear stanza can take more weight / Than a whole wagon of elaborate prose." You should find the rest of the poem and read it for yourself.
And maybe a little prose can be your April mantra. Consider this excerpt from David Markson's recently published The Last Novel: "I've had it with those cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy the book. Growled Kenneth Rexroth."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)