I exhale the moment I cross the threshold. I’ve just returned from a semester abroad in Peru, and am filled with a quiet, resounding sense of homecoming as I step into the dust particles and ghosts of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop. I study the new titles on the “Queer Poetry” shelf with a sense of reverence and curiosity, discovering the books that fill the spaces of those sold while I was away.
My friends, browsing the shelves of the Grolier, Summer 2024.
I’ve worked at the Grolier since 2023, and its impact on my life cannot be overstated. Some of my best friends were made as I heard the tinkle of the bell over the 100-year-old door. Some of my favorite poems were found during slow afternoons spent lounging in the spotted armchair behind the register. It feels like my home, though, because our impact on each other is reciprocal; whenever I visit the shop, as a bookseller or buyer, I swap out a book on the central “Recommended” table for a book I’m currently reading and loving. Nothing brings me more of a thrill than seeing someone pick up a new love of mine from the slanted wood, bringing Raisa Tolchinsky’s Glass Jaw, Cam Awkward-Rich’s Dispatch, or my all-time favorite Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems to the ancient cash register.
I feel like these shelves are mine, just as I am theirs. I am beholden to their words, to the pull of the poems they cradle and hold. They introduced me to my love of Spanish with bilingual collections like Agustin Fernandez Mallo’s Pixel Flesh. They influenced my tattoos and marked my body forever with Limón’s proclamation that, “I swear, I will play on this blessed earth until I die.” These bookshelves hold memories and dreams, tears and hopes, and I feel the blessed weight of it all whenever I enter the shop.
My physical, personal bookshelf also transforms because of the Grolier. It expands in new ways after every reading: Edgar Kunz’s Fixer became a staple on my nightstand after witnessing the marvel that was his poem “Piano” in a cramped corner of the shop. Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s triumphant “Hammond B3 Organ Cistern”, similarly, earned their collection Rocket Fantastic a central place on my shelf. Above my shelf hang bookmarks from all the incredible small presses and imprints that sell their wares at our shop: Analog Sea, Zephyr, and Lily Poetry Review, to name just a few. I am a better writer, reader, and person for the ways that my bookshelf mirrors the change that a poetic haven like the Grolier has sparked in me.
Catie Macauley (they/he/she) is a transmasculine aspiring poet living and working in Boston. They study Sociology, Environmental Studies, and English at Wellesley College, where they also compete on the Wellesley Whiptails frisbee team and perform with the Wellesley Shakespeare Society. A Best of the Net 2024 Nominee, his writing has appeared in brawl lit, The Wellesley News, and the Young Writer’s Project, among other publications. In their free time, Catie enjoys boxing, re-reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and buying far too many books at independent bookstores – primarily the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, where they are somehow lucky enough to work.
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Roadmap: A Choreopoem by Monica Prince - April 3, 2026
- Meet Our New Intern: Tara Rahman - April 2, 2026
- We Call Upon the Author to Explain—Noel Quiñones - April 2, 2026