Bookstore Luck

Given the stack of tantalizing review copies that I brought home from BookExpo Canada, you might think that I’d give bookstores a bye this week. You’d be wrong. I passed two in my travels yesterday and I seem to be constitutionally incapable of passing a bookstore without stopping in. No luck in the first store. But in the second, tucked away in the poetry section, there was a pristine copy of W.H. Auden’s The Dyer’s Hand, a book that I had just that morning resolved to acquire. And a few shelves down, there was Gilbert Sorrentino’s New and Selected Poems 1958-1998. So thoroughly convinced am I by those who have sung the praises of all things Sorrentino that I would have bought that one in any event. But if there had been any doubt, the first poem to which I flipped the book open would have sealed the deal. I couldn’t resist a poem titled “The Poet Tires of Those Who Disparage His City” which begins:

I speak now, tell you a bright truth:
This is a bitter city.
All the poets in disguise, as if
They lived here.

To cap it off, the fellow at the till was so caught up in my glee over these finds that he gave me a break on the sales tax. That’s two more fine books added to my collection thanks to the recommendations of discerning litbloggers.