there's nothing better than linking to someone who just linked to you, and I do so with modest aplomb albeit also as if I've been in the endzone before. so thanks to Eileen Tabios for instigating this excess. dot dot dot. I used to work in a wine store, in fact they let me make displays and create signage and woohoo. I never gave it the rocket science treatment, but still, I thunk about it. so I can criticise the situation. you see the gears working at B&N, with lots of room for Eragon and Hairy Potter, highlights beamed on Jessica Simpson's latest philosophical disquistion, perhaps a cookbook or 3000 to catch the eye, what has William Shatner written another book? and so forth. when it comes to the world of poems for sale, it's a matter of letting the big poetry cartels dictate. way too much poetry lite, like that one: Most Famous American Poems, or some title like that. quality assured poems, as you grit your teeth. a Ted Kooser book was stacked near that end display looking more like a discard (Ted who?) than something exciting and worthy of Christmas of Hannukah overkill. I'd've stuck a sign saying Pullet Surprise on the stack. for those who wanted to get their kid something certifiable. if you wanted to move them books, that is. in other sections of the store, you know why the book is there: Tom Brokaw wrote it, or the cover's cheesy, or Oprah blurbed on it, or the words Stephen King are readily apparent: you know the drill. but in the po section, and it surely is po', you wonder who slept with who to get some of these books on the shelf. I'm not talking qualitative, I'm talking marketing, the lifeblood exercise. it's not like you can't entertain people with Koch and O'Hara. there was a handful of copies of In Memory of my Feelings which, after Beth efforted to remove the plastic wrapper, proved to be O'Hara plus art from famous 60s artists. you only knew this was prime stuff from the $90 price tag. why not underline its yumminess? Lorine Niedecker's was available and her work, if not pizzazzy in the sense that Jennifer Aniston is pizzazzy, is clear and resilient for any honest reader. like, you can read her poems and not feel like they didn't teach you how to read, even tho they did. Bloom's anthology is clearly a piece of crap, he should fire whatever grad student made that selection. it gears up in handy form a good sense of how damn boring poetry is. I'm not talking crummy writing, I'm saying the collection asserts nothing but the bad side of tenure. poetry as the cod liver oil of literature. and so forth. and yet, people want to buy poetry books for their sensitive children, or for their sibling who came back from college all a-buzz, or simply for that certain someone adventurous enough to read something other than the televised brands (did I see some tome cowritten by Ed Asner, a defense of liberalism? you bet I did!). Cambridge still has its sacred Grolier Bookstore, a poetry bookstore, which sounds good but the shopping experience suggests gulag. so B&N, which in its corporate soul just wants to see books fly out the door, should be at least a chance, but it lags with the poetry field. B&N is an egalitarian place: if the product can be productive, it fits. but the store itself should offer some thinking into the mix, instead of waiting for a snob like me to come sniffing. I saw maybe 5 poetry books that I'd get if I had Johnny Damon's potential contract. honest to gosh: too many slump poets, and too little interest by the people in charge of adding sizzle to the steak. how unAmerican. it's a Pickett's charge you suggest, Eileen, but you got the energy. I got your back, for what it's worth.