Published: December 01, 2009 10:24 am      

POETRY: Lewiston man honored at an Eastern Europe festival

Robert Giannetti, Bob's Olde Books

To the unaware he is just Bob, the guy who runs the book store on Center Street in Lewiston.

Certainly, the store, Bob’s Olde Books, is considered a great book store, home to carefully preserved old books with gilt edges, etched leather covers and hand-sewn bindings. Some of the books he has are hundreds of years old.

But the people who pass the store, and even those who stop in for a look, might never know that he is also Robert M. Giannetti, a poet who was recently invited to a summit in Poland, where he was an esteemed American guest feted by mayors and citizens in town halls and libraries.

They also might not know that this is a guy who made his own dreams come true, surrounding himself with the words of writers and thinkers from preceding age, in a business that allows him the luxury of time to join them and do the writing he put aside for much of his adult life.

The act of faith that drew him to open his own store in 2003, was partly responsible for giving him the space to create. That led to the acclaim he recently received in a land far away.

His face graces the back cover of a respected poetry anthology, edited by Polish writer Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda, who included a lengthy critical essay of the Lewiston poet’s work. Reading the review gives us a look into both the poet and the reviewer.

“Especially in America where people are isolated, living widely apart in detached houses, there is a strong need for dialogue with one’s inner self,” the reviewer wrote, adding, “he is an American, but he is primarily a citizen of the planet.”

As such, it seems fitting that Giannetti has surrounded himself with ancient texts and words from the world’s writing masters, from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” to Sinclair Lewis’ “Babbitt.”

“This is a sanctuary as well as a business,” he said recently, surveying his carefully arranged store. “I look at the books as physical works of art,” he added, holding up one to show its speckled calf leather binding and then pulling another from the shelf to admire its intricate gold etching. Then he opens a old French law book that looks as if it could be a prop in an upcoming “Harry Potter” movie. He notes in admiration that the paper has been crafted from pressed decomposed rags.

He cannot imagine a day when books are no longer printed, and notes with surety: “The e-book will never replace a physical book.”

The e-book, and the Internet it exists upon, were the subject of several lectures Giannetti delivered while on his Polish tour.

“Like talk radio, I believe the Internet is really an instrument of separation,” he said. “Our whole sense of universality is threatened wherever we look.”

Regardless, Giannetti’s world seems anchored by the old books carefully displayed with contemporary retail savvy.

The Flushing native, who ended up in Lewiston because of his wife Rita’s Niagara Falls roots, has had what some might consider more prestigious positions. He was an Army officer, a human resource executive and a college professor, but it is as owner of a little book store in Lewiston that he actually appears to be able to touch the world.

He notes, to his great delight, tourists from all corners of the world stop into his shop during the summer. And at the recent poetry festival in Poland, he joined poets from various parts of Poland as well as Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Ethiopa, Iraq and Vietnam. He was the only poet from America.

He also was the only one chosen to grace the back cover of the thick, glossy poetry anthology called Temat (Theme), which also carried the critical essay of his work.

The Polish editor and critic, Lebioda, compared Giannetti’s poems with that of acclaimed American poets, including Carl Sandburg. A quick read of Giannetti’s recently published first book of poems, “Drawn by the Creek,” shows a skill with thoughtfully chosen words to create picturesque emotional imagery.

The book was written in his Georgia creekside fishing cabin. In his poem, “The Happiness,” he writes: “Finally it settles upon me. It has been a long time coming, but I was going too fast, even up here.”

He concludes that poem with: “I exchange my breath with the breeze and am living, not wishing to be anywhere else or to do anything else. However long it last, it is forever.”

The same might be said of his little store in Lewiston, filled as it is with the words from throughout the ages and run by a little known American poet whose workday is crafted around his need to finally write poems.

As such, he has crafted more than poems. He has created a clever imaginative life, which suits his passions.

“It’s a joy to come into work everyday,” he said, with a certain satisfaction. Here, one might wish to quote again from his poem about happiness, in that “however long it lasts, it is forever.”