Our belongings are now somewhere in the greater-Cincinnati/Dayton area, but we’re in suburban Philadelphia, staying at my mom’s for a few nights before we start our cross-state journey tomorrow. We had to stop at a Borders to pick up a copy of J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country for an essay Jennifer’s working on, and while there, I was somewhat surprised and delighted to see that the once-solvent, now-bankrupt mega-chain differentiates between “Poetry” and “Popular Poetry” — the latter consisting almost-entirely of Leonard Cohen, R&B singer Jill Scott, Kahlil Gibran and the best-loved poems of Jackie O. I don’t know what’s funnier: that they feel the need to separate or that this sad and sundry collection is what, in their corporate mindset, is “popular” poetry.
Also, why does practically every mainstream bookstore stock at least a foot of Charles Bukowski? Is he the literary equivalent of slumming it for middle-class suburban folks?
