I have received word from my bookstore that my copy of Zukofsky's Selected Poems has finally arrived. I remember seeing a copy of A (at a Borders, no less) a couple of years ago, but failed to pick it up. The point being, I had to special order it.

You would think that such a major poet would be widely available in bookstores, but no. Not here, not in Houston. The Yellow Pages list 154 bookstores in the city, including adult bookstores, comic bookstores and other types as well. Most of them are either Half-Price Books, Barnes & Noble or Borders. There are a couple of independent bookstores (River Oaks Bookstore, Murder by the Books), but only one carries a section dedicated to poetry (Brazos Bookstore, formerly curated by Michael Dumanis and now by J. Allen Hall) and it might be closing soon (I still receive my student discount there, even though James and Karl know I have graduated).

The only small presses available in Houston are Graywolf, Coffee House Press (can we still really consider those two small presses nowadays; granted, they are both non-profit, but they have the same clout and distribution as Harcourt, FSG, Ecco or HarperCollins), Soft Skull, Verse Press, Green Integer (surprisingly, at Borders and not Brazos) and university presses. Presses that can't be found in Houston include Winnow Press (I really need to order sometime a copy of Shanna Compton's Down Spooky), effing press (which is surprising, since they are both located in Austin), Ugly Duckling Presse, Action Books, Tin Fish, Wave Books, Kelsey St. (although I did find a copy of Mei Mei Bressenburge's Nest at Half-Price Books) etc. (and I doubt Outside Voices will be found here) So, apparently no room for Carol Mirakove, K. Silem Mohammad, Drew Gardner, Juliana Spahr's The Connection of Everyone With Lungs, Brent Cunningham, Anselm and Edmund Berrigan, Hoa Nguyen, Susan Howe, Rae Armantrout, derek beaulieu, Ray Hsu, Sawako Nakayasu, Lara Glenum ...

In a way, I am glad that Anne Boyer's book is coming out of Coffee House, because I know I will be able to find it in Houston. Of course, by the time it is released, I will be far away from Texas. And of course, I could always order those books online, through Small Press Distribution or Powells, but I like to touch and browse a book before I buy it (one exception being Outside Voices' and UDP's publications, because I know they'll be pretty). And God knows I'll need to bring an empty suitcase for all the books I will get at AWP next year.

I'd still like to know why there is such of disparity of distribution. Austin (and maybe Arlington) seem somewhat better off. I'm not sure about Boulder/Denver (John?) or Charlottesville (Jessica?). Maybe there is a correlation between the poets living in a city and the books sold there. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco have a great diversity of voices. Houston, on the other hand, has Adam Zagajewski, Ed Hirsch (even though he is not teaching at the moment, his presence is still felt), Tony Hoagland, Nick Flynn, Jennifer Grotz, Cynthia McDonalds, Bob Phillips and Mark Doty. A rather SoQ crowd (I am just listing the people who have somewhat of an influence here; I would also like to list Joshua Edwards of The Canary and Samantha Schnee of Words Without Borders, but I have not seen them participate in literary events in Houston). Matthea Harvey, Kimiko Hahn and Claudia Rankine are gone now, and I am not sure how they impacted taste in Houston.