Image borrowed from the Gray Matter Facebook page.

I met Karen Schoemer at a recent St. Rocco’s Reading Series event, where we talked poetry, bookshops, and how we’ve crossed paths in the literary and bookshop worlds twice without my remembering. But I do remember that Karen read some great poems that day and has a fascinating background as a music writer and performer (details on that below), and so I asked her about her favorite bookshop for my interview series. She came up with a good one! I need to check this place out!

Favorite Bookshop: Gray Matter in East Hadley, Mass.

1. How did you discover the shop, and what do you remember about your first experience there?

Somebody must have said, "Have you been to Gray Matter?" That's all it takes. I'm always looking for new bookstores to explore and support. Gray Matter is a cement-floored warren of alcoves and teetering stacks near I-91 and the Norwattuck Rail Trail in East Hadley, about 15 minutes from Northampton to the west and Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst to the east. There's an enormous, constantly regenerating, expertly curated poetry section and my recollection of my first visit is that I had the impossible ambition of reading every narrow slumping spine. I fell into a kind of mania, I was euphoric and wanted to stuff myself, like at a grand buffet.

2. Does the shop have a particular vibe, theme, or atmosphere that stands out?

Gray Matter isn't overly quaint. I think it's a former industrial building and the ceilings are kind of low and the lighting is a bit wan. But whoever stocks it really knows and loves literature--I always discover new writers there or lesser-known works by favorite authors or gorgeous editions at reasonable prices. I remember walking in and the center table was piled with vintage copies of the Alvin Lustig dust jacketed edition of New Directions New Classics "The Longest Journey" by E.M. Forster. They had come into a trove. There were like 30 copies. I already had one! The vibe in there is, "We know you're a glutton for books, we are too, we know that life is brutish and short, please take pleasure in these humble and wildly excessive offerings."

3. What books have you bought there in the past?

There's an alcove devoted to mass market-sized paperback classics and I love looking there. I've found Albatross editions, which was a line of European-produced paperbacks that preceded and influenced Penguin in the 1930s. On my most recent visit, I came away with two books by the poet Charles Simic, a James Schuyler, "The Garden of the Fitzi-Continis" by Giorgio Bassini, and a complete paperback silver Vintage collection of the Moncrieff translation of Proust in a slipcase for $15. Now I have no excuse not to read it! I also particularly treasure some hardcover Stefan Zweigs with beautiful floral covers that I found there a couple of years ago for $10 each.

4. What part of the shop would we find you hanging out in the most?

The dizzying, electrifying, overwhelming poetry section, the fiction stacks, and at the counter as I'm trying to check out without breaking the bank, a shelf of New York Review Classics which I can never keep my greedy paws out of.

Karen Schoemer is a poet and performer in Columbia County, vocalist for Sky Furrows and Jaded Azurites, a former music writer for The New York Times and Newsweek, and bookseller at Rodgers Book Barn, the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, and the Spotty Dog. Sky Furrows will perform at Desperate Annie's in Saratoga on March 28 at 9 pm as part of Super Dark Mondays. Their debut album came out in October 2020.

https://skyfurrows.bandcamp.com/album/sky-furrows

https://jadedazurites.bandcamp.com

Sky Furrows l-r: Phil Donnelly, Eric Hardiman, Karen Schoemer, Mike Griffin