"Unrecognized Legislators Of The World"

This is a great bit of news. Thanks, Ifeanyi Menkiti, you are doing a wonderful service for all of us.

When he bought the venerable Grolier Poetry Book Shop in April, poet and professor Ifeanyi Menkiti took a leap of faith. It will take a lot of that to make the store succeed in a publishing world where poetry inhabits a tiny corner.

Menkiti is undaunted.

``I have a strong sense of hope and belief that poetry can help our world," he said. ``The sense of a world together has formed a very important part of my own poetry, and I'm hoping the Grolier can organize programs to keep that spirit alive."

For 79 years, the little box on Plympton Street near Harvard Square, where bookshelves share wall space with framed photos of such friends and patrons as Allen Ginsberg, T.S. Eliot, and Marianne Moore, persisted under only two owners -- founder Gordon Cairnie and, since 1974, Louisa Solano. It's one of only two all-poetry stores in America; the other is Seattle's Open Books.