Global InformationGrolier Poetry Bookshop information
 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (March 2015) |
| Industry | Specialty retail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1927 |
| Founder | Adrian Gambet and Gordon Cairnie |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts , United States |
Number of locations | 1 store |
Area served | Boston metropolitan area |
| Products | Poetry books |
| Owner | Ifeanyi Menkiti |
| Website | http://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org/ |
The Grolier Poetry Book Shop ("the Grolier") 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 (404 sq ft (37.5 m2)), one-room store with towering bookcases, it claims to be 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 had become a magnet for American poets because of the influence of Harvard University. 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."