Previous trips to Grolier Poetry Shop in Harvard Sq., I found there a wiry older proprietess, mid 50s maybe, with specs tied round her neck on cable, who whirled around the poetry shop—that tall, square room—plotting with regulars over the affairs of various contemporary poets and their sporadic releases.

This time, as I walked at first away from the ajar front door, with its "Monday: closed" sign, a gentle man with considerable presence hailed from behind. "Did you want to go in?" he asked unassuredly. The sign and the door's ajarness conflicted, I noted. "The rule is, if I'm here, its open." He must have been watching across the street. He set his long, fat stogie on the doorstep, lit tip down, and waved me into the tall, square room.

Poetry is a foolish pursuit—reading it, I mean, and shopping for it, even worse. A poem can amaze you; sometimes it can, in tiny but vital doses, liberate you, but only when in very close contact with it, and even then, unlikely. But even so, if you've got the stomach, it's worth keeping a small poems shelf, because it does still fill the role it always had: musical language, thus memorable, and so you can take it with you on your travels, into the wilderness. I got slim volumes of Robert Hass and Henri Cole.

In situ note: Tommy's is now a convenience store—no pass-through pizza parlor there anymore for pish-drunk freshmen! Still called Tommy's, though!

Now go read this Miranda Gaw joint, "The Fiji Mermaid," in the Swarthmore Review.