Boosting Poetry's Profile by Ordering Locally

In response to what I wrote about online ordering a couple of posts back, my friend and fellow-writer Elise Moser, who happens to work as a publisher's representative, passed on these thoughtful remarks on the advantages for poetry's profile of ordering through local bookstores rather than on-line -- considerations that had frankly never crossed my mind (pls. excuse the tiny font: formatting it small was the only way to transpose an e-mail into blogger without having line-breaks all over the place):

...I wanted to mention, having seen you post on Amazon and other online
book ordering services, that there is always also the option of ordering
through a bookstore here in Montreal. That has two advantages. One is,
they pay the shipping and you avoid customs charges. The other is that
when you make a special order it affects their view of the book market.
So for example if they get some special orders for a specific title or
author they might order some of those books for their shelves. And if
they see a lot of orders come through for, say, poetry books, they are
more likely to order poetry titles for stock. This is especially
important for a subject like poetry, which is underrepresented in
bookstores due to lack of knowledge on their part, but also due to the
perception that no one buys poetry. I wouldn't say you should give up a
good price or some other advantage, but if it's all the same, why order
from U.of Chicago direct when you could raise the visibility of poetry
at Paragraphe, or Bibliophile, or the McGill Bookstore? And this would
have the benefit for you, in future, of making poetry books more
available and, potentially, therefore even broadening the market for
poetry. Just a thought.

XJ Kennedy, Robert Duncan, et al.

Googling around for citations of Ciardi for the post below, I found this rather fun interview with XJ Kennedy. In it he talks about how Ciardi edited by "sympathetic contract", about trends in poetry, the ease of getting published but the difficulty of "getting noticed", etc.

Tony Tost meanwhile has sent my browser to a lecture by Robert Duncan, recorded some 30 years ago. This should provide an hour and a half's entertainment.

Things that arrived in the mail from Amazon today: Janet Frame's Faces in the Water (we couldn't find any Frame in any of the bookstores here... an Xmas gift for my girlfriend, which I've already wrapped...hardly a surprise since she saw me order it), Tony Tost's Invisible Bride, and The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Forms edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. The latter looks like not only a beautiful anthology, but a remarkably unstuffy approach to closed and open forms, by poets, for poets. On order: Blizzard of One: Poems by Mark Strand; Triggering Town by Richard Hugo; Contemporary American Poets, an old anthology my friend Adze is reading, which I got for about $3; Duncan's Selected, and Introspections: American Poets on their own poems, by Robert Pack (thanks for recommending that, Charles). An order of Strand's Selected backfired, the bargain price copy I ordered not available. I'll reorder when I see the money's been refunded.

A note for Canadians ordering from US booksellers thru Amazon: the prices look like bargoons, even in Cdn. $$, but shipping costs approximately double them, on average. They don't tell you those costs until just before you finalize the order, in an obscure top right corner of your screen. The first time I ordered I didn't notice: I found out how much I was getting whacked with when I got my bill emailed to me. In most cases, though, it's worth it anyway. In others, there's no alternative. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get hit with customs charges. (The books were priced low enough... I think ... but...)