Proem     

Collecting isn’t shopping. Discipline

Is key: lack it and you’re flying blind.

What subjects are you interested in?

Whatever they are, they need to be defined,

The titles rare, perhaps one of a kind,

Or printed skillfully, with illustrations,

Or nicely bound in calf, and gilt, or signed:

For what’s the point of sprawling aggregations

Of books that could be picked up cheap by one’s relations?

1

Rare books can cost the earth – unless they don’t:

Taste, not cash, is crucial for cohesion.

Want it? A modest checkbook balance won’t

Rule out an acquisition you believe in.

Must-have books are never out of season;

You’re not required to be a millionaire.

Collecting’s rationalization over reason:

Purchasing what you think’s passing fair

Resulting in a book to treasure and to share.

    2

Jean Grolier was a royal tax inspector,

Treasurer-General to the King of France,

Celebrated as a book collector:

A man of means, well-suited to enhance

His lib’ry through his stature in finance.

He was the sort of man who freely lends

His books to those in need, a circumstance

That made him mark his bindings to these ends:

Their covers say: “I’m owned by Grolier and his friends.”

3

Skip 350 years: then a committee,

Made up of eight men led by Robert Hoe

Agrees to form a club in New York City

Named for Grolier, in order to bestow

The finest book collecting name they know

On their new social club. Its purpose? To 

Advocate the love of books and show,

In times when well-constructed books were few,

An interest in fine book design, both old and new.

4

At first in rented rooms, in ’84,

Then in a clubhouse custom-built they’d meet,

Their common bookish interests to explore:

To show and tell (and brag) and drink and eat

At 47 East Sixtieth Street.

Then women joined (new equity injecting)

Expanding assets on the balance sheet:

Librarians, scholars, dealers all connecting,

United by a love of books, and by collecting.

Zachs 

Pirages 

Gross 

Fearrington 

    Hoy 

    Shirley Rendell 

   Wendell 

    Adkins 

5

The present exhibition has within

Potterings by Rowling (with a K),

A leaf on vellum Barney didn’t win,

Tycho staring at the Milky Way,

Colored prints of shells (no ashtrays they),

The Passing of King Arthur (Julia’s glory),

Fragments from Madame de Sévigné,

Lonely Lincoln letters (there’s a story),

An alphabet for Gretchen, made by Edward Gorey.

Kenneth Rendell 

    Bury 

    Browne 

    Brynteson 

    Brandt 

    Kuhn 

    Bowles 

   Dannay 

    Heritage 

6

 Westward ho! with Washington: high noon,

 A #30 London bus blown down, 

 Amerindians living on the moon,

 Dawn’s DJ, signed, disowned: a triple crown!

 A Small description of Portmeirion town,

 Lights of Canada and leading Boers,

 Salmon fishing, best there is (hands down),

 Hunter’s lawyer’s Gladly’s cross-eyed roars,

 Grumbach adds to Roger Straus’ yearly chores.

Ramer 

    Lowenherz 

Combs; de Hamel 

    Farren 

    Dunlap 

    Felcone 

    Treleaven 

    Chevalier 

    Butler 

7

 Southey writes a history of Brazil,

 Frost as physicist (it is to laugh),

 Jesus walks on water, writes a will,

 A tintype crescent moon (folk photograph),

 Johnson Mason Jr’s holograph.

 Perth Amboy prints the first New Jersey law,

 Emma of Hawaii’s autograph,

 The evolution of an aye-aye’s paw,   

 A Russian legal code that Catherine oversaw.

    Loper 

   Loker; Bryson 

    Vander Meulen 

    Gitlin 

   Kelly 

    Tichenor 

    Rubin 

    Gordan 

    Morrison 

8

 A book for Henry IX (that forlorn hope),

 Hieroglyphic bibles, books in parts,                           

 Books on pretty children (think of Pope),

 A book from Yale that had its fits and starts, 

 A book from Zapf, that dean of graphic arts.

 A showing of Great Primer, nicely kerned,

 Botswana paper made from elephant farts,

 A book for which time in the stocks was earned,

 A book for which the luckless Servetus was burned.

Raybould; Fletcher 

     Speeckaert 

    Hutner 

   Mode 

   Wynn 

    Raymo 

9

 Early books from Antwerp and from Paris,

 In Grolier bindings (or maybe by Hagué),

 Staghunt missed by Cantón (who knows where is),

 Maps on which the sun don’t set, they say,

 A Harvard student’s Birds of Oyster Bay.

 Shattered Plath (not the girl she once was):  

 So many books and bindings on display

 We’d like to own ourselves, but can’t, because

 Our money runs out long before our month does.

    Rosin 

   Goren 

    Windle 

    Coquillette 

    Deutsch 

10

 A sailor’s handmade Valentine to Annie,

 A book I couldn’t read that caught my eye,

 My first book in a cover knit by Nanny,

 A book my father was too poor to buy --

 But did; a book that made Beraldi cry.

 As Grolier members’ contributions grew

 (And as these summaries imply),

 The framers of this exhibition knew,

 A sentimental library was going to be on view.

Interlude

 Assigned to write an introduction to this book,

 I’ve worked my way through many a rhymeless night.

 Arthur! Eric!! the Muse hath me forsook;

 Spenserian stanzas are a bitch to write!

 I should have gone for prose, not poesy.

 No Edmund Spenser –  no Lord Byron –  me.

12

But, speaking of Byron: on Bad Poetry days

He ditched Master Spenser and constructed his lays

In anapest meter, each line with a twin:

“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold”

– And so on, in verses made faster (believe me)

Than A B A B B and C B C C.

With a clickity click, and a yakkity yaktyl

My metrical scheme do-si-do’s into dactyl.

Abandoning Spenser, my worries laid low

I return to a list of the books in the show:

Duhl 

    Klimon 

   Anne Young; Leab 

   Davis; Crawford 

    Gatch 

    Pistner 

    Dwyer 

    Jay 

13

 Decameron-like stories that stop on Day Seven,

 Thayer’s migration from Protestant Heaven.

 Anti-war labels and blacklisting snarls,

 Dickens on dinners (both Catherine and Charles).

A Methodist preacher tarred in Minnesota,

Lines printed with blocks and placed in a pagoda.

Cloth bindings with dots that parade up and down,

A man without fingers from Nuremberg town.

   Szmuk-Tanenbaum 

   Chamonal 

  Tanselle 

   Bidwell 

   Schimmel

  Flamm 

   Kopley 

Matthew Young;

Howard 

14

 Szilvia’s Friction with titles grotesque,

 An American atlas once owned by Peiresc.

 The Garden of Cyrus (introduction by Carter),

 Polyglot drafts of the UN’s first charter.

 Feminine treks through the Cumberland Gap,

 Eight Isidore woodcuts (including the map).

 Hawthorne discovers a source close at home,

 Andrew finds horn books and Ned writes a pome. 

Hurley 

Ruben 

Dailey 

Cartin 

 Rose 

Reese 

Daniel Albert; Schwartz 

15

 A Gorski book reader hangs on Cheryl’s wall,

 Ruben’s’s wild boy remains silent to all.

 The City of Angels: a citrus fair’s hope,

 Joachim’s prescription for mending the pope.

 Woman-manned fortresses (feminist pleas),

 Melville at Customs (no cannibal he’s),

 Micrographed lice – or could they be fleas?

DiLaura 

Dance 

Heneghan 

Edwards 

 Tane 

 McElveen 

Scher 

  Tomasko

16

 Isaac on optics in Latin makes hay,

 Souvenir photographs shot at Pompeii.

 A sketch at the Black Cat (a Beat-era bar),

 A translator tampers with Gibbon’s Memoires.

 A postcard from Sandburg, hot off the plane,

 Lewis and Clark’s continental campaign.

 A medal of Louis Fourteen as a child,

 A Grangerized scrapbook, where Jenny Lind's

filed.

De Simone 

Koppelman; Mourek 

 Gray 

Harrison 

 Herman; Clemons 

 Stoneman 

Fern Cohen 

  Schwarz 

17

 A book on Ferrara with watermark plates,

 Sketchbooks and essays by Yeats and by Yeats.

 American Monuments imaged by Lee,

 A library turns mollusk-like at TCD.

 Darwin reads Gaskell, Scott’s red letters roam,

 Lefty gives Princeton a copy of OME.

 A Curious Herbal springs hubby from jail,

 Examples of George I’s impenetrable mail.

Riggs 

 Yellowlees 

   Pattison 

    Nadell 

    Pfaehler 

    Natalie Blaney 

    Havens 

   Ong 

    18

 Repton on landscape (a gardener’s delight),

 The Ranchos de Taos, hand-plastered in light.

 George slays his dragon (per Salvador Dali),

 Erasmus attempts to save Christians from folly.

 Amsterdam’s Stadt Huis, a building renowned,

 Modernist poets, especially Pound.

 Bronzes of Gutenberg (more than a touch of him),

 Sprinklings of Dibdin (but not very much of him).

    Iselin 

Redden 

  Zinman 

 Whitridge 

Meredith; Korey 

John Blaney; Kligfield 

 Berger/Cloonan 

Schreiber 

19

 Cruikshank by George (brother Bob takes a hit),

 Violet Maxse, a lady with It.

 Federalist essays (a thick paper copy),

 Arnoldian bust of my great great grand-poppy.

 FDR’s Friendship, Miss Currer at home,

 Bombs over Dresden, heart failure in Rome.

 Japanese paper with intro by Sid,

 American comics Fred read as a kid.

 Schiller 

Neale Albert 

   Strauss 

   Sypher 

Vroom; Stephenson;

Baione

Storey 

  Kraus 

   Wilson 

20

 Justin buys Oz books, at least from age ten,

 Kirkpatrick, commissioned, starts binding again.

 Picasso goes cubic, saintly and strong,

 It’s Hotten not Moxon (John Quinn got it wrong).

 Books giving orders, with Petrarch and Haeckel,

 Stencils by Campbell, more Hydish than Jekyll.

 Two Indian miniatures, now welcomed back,

 Ricketts goes Egypt in red, green, and black.

Periconi; Oresman 

Hersh Cohen; Neubauer 

  Thompson 

  Ingalls 

Owen; Rose; Hill 

 Lindseth

21

 Silkscreens by Barker, screenprints by Shahn,

 Civic Insomnia, James Joyce added on.    

 A binding by Martin (as good as Bonet),

 The nourishing page as a secret buffet.

 Ashendene, doves, rampant lions, birds and bulls,

 Fables in Hebrew for reading in shuls.

 Dactyl and anapest: poets’ delight:

 TRA la la, DUM de dum, into the night....

L’envoi

Grolier Collects II thus aims to air

Two requirements needed for a book:

Th’ creator and the reader: they’re a pair –

Plus one – a trio: never overlook

The one who found the object and who took

An owner’s interest in it, with ambition

First to hold and then to have. Go look!

For now (concluding prolix exposition)

This preface sends you off to see the exhibition.