It's the best English-language bookshop in the world," enthused Scott Verner, reviews editor at Poetry London, when asked to comment on the 75-year-old Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Mass. "It's an international treasure."

That the tiny Grolier, which is about the size of many living rooms—a mere 404-sq.-ft., wooden-floored room—should elicit such praise is a tribute to Gordon Cairnie and Adrian Gambet, who founded the store in 1927, and to Louisa Solano, who bought the Grolier when Cairnie died in 1974. Named for the 16th-century French bibliophile Jean Grolier, the store originally stocked avant-garde literature, private press books and poetry.

Solano converted the Grolier into a poetry-only bookstore, one of two such specialty stores in the United States, added more bookshelves (which almost reach the ceiling) and replaced the sofa (where e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot and Marianne Moore once held forth) with a display table. But some things haven't changed over the years, including the store's location on Plympton Street near Harvard University, and its karma. "What really pleases me no end," Solano told PW, "is when people say, 'Your store has changed by necessity, but it still has the same feel.' "

New Yorker poetry editor Alice Quinn, executive director of the Poetry Society of America, also noted the store's poetic sensibility. "You can feel the young Adrienne Rich and Robert Lowell's spirit, and Maxine Kumin and Charles Olson. It's just a wonderful shop," she said. As a way of paying tribute to the Grolier's legacy, Quinn and the PSA are organizing a reading in Cambridge on September 23 with Frank Bidart, Martin Espada, Jorie Graham, Donald Hall, Marie Howe, Philip Levine and James Tate. "Everyone wants to read," says Quinn. "Seamus Heaney is coming to the States four days early to read."

During the Cairnie years, the Grolier didn't depend on sales to stay open. When questioned about business, he would reply, "the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe," referring to his wife's trust fund. "There was a lot of talking, very little selling," recalled Solano.

"He did lovely things," said poet Robert Creeley, "like marking a book up if he liked it especially—not just to get a higher price but really to keep it from leaving the store." And what little selling was done was often at a loss. Quinn recalls browsing through books she couldn't afford: "Gordon would say, 'It's amazing. Those books you're looking at are on sale today.' "

Donald Hall first discovered the Grolier when he was at Harvard in 1947 and read a review by Louise Bogan of Richard Wilbur's The Beautiful Changes. "I had never heard of him and I walked over to the bookstore to get the book," says Hall. "There was an old fellow—infinitely younger than I am now—who sold me the book. That began 55 years of acquaintance and love. I would sit on the old sofa talking with Gordon. I met Richard Eberhard there, Richard Wilbur, Robert Creeley, and everybody around Harvard or Cambridge at that time. When Gordon got sickly and old, I assumed that not only would I lose my friend, but that great store. Louisa made it greater. The stock is better and she is tireless in promoting poetry."

Solano didn't visit the Grolier until nearly a decade after Hall. She first saw Cairnie's sign on the door proclaiming, "No textbooks, no law books, no medical books, just poetry," in 1956, when she was just 15. But even then she knew the Grolier was her destiny. "The first time I walked up these stairs, I knew I was going to own this store. I went home and told my mother I was going to own it." When she did buy it, years later, with a loan of $15,000 from 15 friends, she had no financial reserves like Cairnie and had to make the Grolier pay for itself. Fortunately, she already had years of bookstore experience. "I helped out at the Grolier to learn an attitude, and I worked at [Boston's] Goodspeed Book Shop to learn the business," she said, adding that earning her B.A. by attending night school at Boston University also helped. "It was a great education for the store: no sleep and lots of work."

Today the Grolier is mostly a one-woman store. Solano buys the books and assists customers, often at the same time. She also organizes and runs the store's many readings in Cambridge; reads submissions for the store's annual Grolier Poetry Prize; and updates the Web site, www.grolierpoetrybookshop.com.

The Grolier, which stocks more than 16,000 poetry titles, was one of the first bookstores to have a fax machine and a computerized inventory system. Although sales lately have been flat and theft has become an increasing problem, Solano remains optimistic about the fate of the Grolier in an age of superstores. "Despite a very deep and lasting strain of cynicism, I'm always optimistic about the existence of this place," she said.

Creeley, for one, is glad that she is able to keep it going. "Poets have all too few places where either themselves or their production are that welcome finally. Grolier's has been the abiding light in the window." If determination counts for anything, Solano plans to keep the lights on at the Grolier for many years to come.