"If this store can get into its second century," said Ifeanyi Menkiti, poet, philosophy professor and owner of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, Mass., "then my job is done."
Menkiti, who is 73 and Nigerian-born, bought the Grolier in 2006, after the store, one of handful of poetry-only bookstores in the U.S., had had several years of financial trouble and longtime owner Louisa Solano began to have health problems. Unwilling to see a part of history lost, Menkiti purchased the store, though he knew nothing about operating a business or selling books. The experience, in his words, has been both a "labor of love" and "baptism by fire."
The Grolier celebrated its 85th anniversary last September, and to help ensure that it continues long after his retirement, Menkiti created the Grolier Poetry Foundation, a nonprofit organization that will eventually step in and run the store. At present, the foundation is still very much in a fledgling state.
"The idea is not for the foundation to take over in one moment, but to gradually take over, to do it carefully and slowly and to do it right," Menkiti said. "Get the wrong people, and a hundred years of history could go down the drain."
Under Menkiti, the Grolier Poetry Bookshop has added a publishing imprint, Grolier Poetry Press, which has published five books. Three of those poetry collections were written by the winners of the annual Grolier Discovery Award, beginning with Keith O'Shaughnessy's Incommunicado in 2011, followed by Spring Berman's All Time Acceptable in 2012 and Some Far Country by Patridge Boswell, published this spring. Grolier Poetry Press has also run the Established Poets Series since 2012, which so far consists of So Spoke Penelope by Tino Villanueva and Dark Energy by Frederick Feirstein.
The reception to these books, reported Menkiti, has been very good. O'Shaughnessy's book will soon go back to press for a second printing, and he expects Villanueva's and Feirstein's books will do the same by the end of the year. The current plan is for Grolier Poetry Press to publish two books of poetry per year, although Menkiti said he would be amenable to publishing perhaps another book by an established poet, if means allowed.
The Grolier also sponsors readings and cultural events with poets from as far afield as eastern Europe and Myanmar. Menkiti hopes that as the foundation grows and gradually takes more control, it can expand the Grolier's cultural and educational events in a more systematic and organized manner.
"There is something about poetry," mused Menkiti. "The spirit of poetry will never, never go away.... People will always want it to read it, want to hear it. The interest in poetry is there, but the question is, how do you leverage that to support the business side of selling books?"
Becoming a nonprofit should help insulate the shop from the vicissitudes of an industry still in the midst of a profound transition, and Menkiti believes that the publishing imprint can maintain the store's vitality and cultural mission.
"We all have different pathways to poetry," said Menkiti. His began with the poems of Ezra Pound, which he first encountered while studying in Nigeria, then under British rule. Menkiti attended Pomona College in California on a scholarship and wrote his undergraduate thesis on Pound's work. He was given the English department's highest award and a prize of $100.
"The best prize in English went to an African guy," Menkiti recalled. "They never did that back then. And [the faculty] never second-guessed themselves. It took courage and integrity. Since then I've associated honor and integrity with poetry." --Alex Mutter