Description

The Grolier Poetry Book Shop is an independent bookstore on Plympton Street near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Although founded as a "first edition" bookstore, its focus today is solely poetry. A small, one-room store with towering bookcases, it lays claim to being the "oldest continuous bookshop" devoted solely to the sale of poetry and poetry criticism.Over the years, the Grolier became a focus of poetic activity in the Cambridge area, which itself had, because of the influence of Harvard University, become a magnet for American poets. It became a point of call for visiting poets as well as a nexus of gossip, rumor and networking in the poetry community. Poets such as John Ashbery, Robert Bly, Robert Creeley, Donald Hall, and Frank O'Hara were regulars at the store during their time as undergraduates at Harvard; the poet Conrad Aiken lived upstairs from the store in its early days. Numerous other poets and writers, including Russell Banks, Frank Bidart, William Corbett, E. E. Cummings, T. S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Ferry, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Marianne Moore, Charles Olson, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Ruth Stone, James Tate and Franz Wright, have been noted as "friends of the Grolier."

Reviews for Grolier Poetry Book Shop

Annie W.

history lives here! the best poets read here! the bookstore is exclusively poetry! it's situated in a little hole-in-the-wall behind harvard book store... Read more

Sandra V.

I am afraid for businesses like these in hard economic times. I'm not even that big of a fan of poetry, but decided to go in and look for anything by a... Read more

Park W.

One of my favorite bookstores, around the corner from the Harvard Bookstore (which makes that street dangerous for my wallet). I believe this one-room... Read more

Project on Disability

NESE has just been named one of the top five English language schools in the world by Viagem E Turismo magazine in Brazil. Only one other language school in the United States (and none in Boston) was recognized with this distinction.