From the Island Books newsletter April 17, 2019 I’ve been writing poetry, or something resembling that, consistently since I was eleven years old. I’ve always liked words, the energy, the power, and the meanings that all vary. Unlike prose writing, poetry offers up a canvas of possibility in its negative space. I found I was …
Gentle, confident poems cascade, unnamed, through a muted urban landscape, eventually diving off of big ideas atop delicate stems. Soldofsky has a knack for condensation, which is, perhaps, one for word-choice: an expansive vocabulary attuned to the microscopic. And a voice I wish to inhabit. Smart, playful, observant, energizing. A wonderful debut. –Alexander Moysaenko, Open …
Saturday April 29 marked the third national Independent Bookstore Day and the third Seattle Bookstore Day. In Seattle, the weather held and bookstore love was out in full force. The Seattle Bookstore Day Indie Challenge increased to 23 participating stores, with a visit to 19 stores required to achieve Indie Champion status (and a 25% discount …
This week, Christine Deavel, co-owner of Open Books: A Poem Emporium in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle and bookseller for 26 years, announced that she is moving on from the store to accept a position as a family and patient liaison at Harborview Medical Center. Below, we have her sweet letter to Open Books’ customers, followed by an …
From Shelf Awareness: Open Books Drops Readings, Promotes ‘Communal’ Events In an unusual move that runs against the grain of independent bookselling trends, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle, Wash., last month began a new policy of no longer hosting poetry readings. Owners John Marshall and Christine Deavel said in a store post that the …
A book, handed with knowledge and genuine enthusiasm from one person to another can have thoroughly unforeseen consequences. Here’s a clear example… Early one afternoon a woman spent a deliciously long time, an hour at least, pondering books in the store. She sat with a variety of books stacked next to her on the bench …
What? There’s beach-reading to be found on the poetry shelves? You bet, stretch out on the chaise and we’ll dip into a few. Sometimes the summer books that beckon are playful, quirky, maybe even refreshingly unsettling. James Tate’s contemporary poetry fables fit that definition to a T, and his latest collection, The Eternal Ones of …
His was a seemingly innocent question. I was prone in my dentist’s chair about to wait ten eventless minutes in the process of having a crown put in when Brian, my dentist, asked, “Did you bring a Kindle?” He was offering to retrieve it from the waiting room so that I’d have something to read. …
“Awards can be helpful nudges, moving an overlooked writer’s book to the top of a reader’s bedside stack. So it was for us with David Ferry, whose collection Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations received this year’s National Book Award. We understand why the judges chose it. This is a powerful, haunting collection, but subtly so (that’s part of its …
Don’t worry– this isn’t a scorching screed or a pitiful whine. It’s not even a calmly reasoned exegesis on the state of contemporary bookselling or contemporary poetry or (Lord help us) both. At least that’s not my intent. Lately I’ve been thinking about all the people over the years who unexpectedly stopped coming into my …
