Portland
as a city is every bit as nice as everyone claims that it is. The big branded
chain stores are hard to find, there really does seem to be an indie coffee
house that knows how to make a proper double-shot espresso every 1.5 blocks (or
less), the airport has a bicycle assembly area, the basement at Yale Union (an
art space being crafted out of an old industrial laundry just east of downtown)
has – I saw it with my own eyes – an open creek, there are goats in the vacant
lot across the street, I had a great time with several interesting poets &
artists, and the sea salt ice cream (laced with caramel) that I consumed at Salt & Straw on NE Alberta Street could
be the best ice cream ever. Add majestic views (many of them, quite varied,
mostly on northwestern themes) & who cares if it drizzles a little?
However,
it’s predictable that a grump like yours truly would find one serious downer
amid all this compulsive niceness – the poetry section at Powell’s. I’ve been told – I was surprised
how quickly & defensively Portlanders were to respond to this charge – that
my sampling may have been unfair in that the section has been relocated
temporarily out of the blue room (currently undergoing renovation) and moved up
to the third floor behind the rather large events area (many rows of folding
chairs). So I won’t chide it for being as out-of-the-way as any poetry section
you could find in a B&N anywhere in America. But what really struck me was
the many, many empty shelves & overall mediocre selection of what Powell’s did
have on display. I’m being churlish, no doubt, since they did have one of my
own books available new – ®
-- a 1995 Drogue Press volume. The website suggests that there may be a few
other volumes hiding in a warehouse somewhere. And frankly I was flattered to
be recognized by a checkout clerk who told me that I “looked like a poet” he knew,
quickly amended to “knew of.” But when Sean in the porkpie hat showed up at the
reading with that book in hand to sign, he & I both noted that Powell’s was
now stripped bare of my verse, save maybe for the usual anthologies. Big sigh.
I’m less
concerned with my own representation there than with the idea that a poetry
section with many empty shelves is as good as one chockablock full (see the Chester County Book Company in the West Goshen Mall, for example). That is just not my notion
of how a reseller should operate. I could not find anything to buy in the
Powell’s poetry section, where I did in the far smaller (but more crowded)
Chester County store just this last month (Wendell Berry on William Carlos
Williams to be exact). It was a reminder, yet again, that poetry & the
publishing industry are two separate fields with relatively little in the way
of overlap.
I wouldn’t even call the Chester County Book Company a great
bookstore, but you can see their passion for their product, whereas my sense of
Powell’s was that its passion was for the store itself. I did buy some books –
an early Kerouac novel from the remainders and a paperback from the earth
sciences volumes relegated to a second satellite shop across the street (I
suppose they could have hidden poetry there, so maybe I’m being overly harsh).
But if you were to ask me to name the great bookstores for poetry in the USA –
Woodland Pattern, Moe’s, City Lights, Open Books, St. Marks Bookshop, Bridge
Street Books in DC would all come to mind well before Powell’s. The idea that
the best poetry bookstore in the US still is in Milwaukee pretty much says it
all.