Poetry Stars at Starbucks

When you walk into your local Starbucks on September 29, don't be surprised if someone hands you a sample bag of whole coffee beans and a booklet titled "Poems from the Coffee Lands." Starbucks has decided to thank its loyal customers for their support by giving them a special gift. "We're not promoting a blend of coffee per se but rather the connection we feel, and which we want our customers to feel, to coffee origin countries and their cultures," explains David Brewster, Director, Hear Music, Starbucks Coffee Co.

The beans make sense, but why poetry? "Poetry and the coffeehouse are a perfectly natural, and historic, pairing," notes Brewster of the company's newest endeavor. "Starbucks strives to create a modern coffeehouse atmosphere, and creative processes (poetry, journaling, or, just as often, web surfing) are a core aspect of what happens in coffeehouses all over."

The coffee-colored booklet serves up 15 poems from Brazil, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, and Panama, countries producing the beans that help make Starbucks coffee so delicious. Represented here are Mexico's magisterial Octavio Paz, the lush poetry of Indonesia ("Sea, where is your source/ so that I can return to your origins?"), and some especially vivid verse from Brazil ("the animal alphabet/ passes/ what one does not write remains"). Also included is an excerpt from Mexican American Jimmy Santiago Baca's new book, Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande, as well as Ethiopian American Kifle Bantayehu's tart and telling "Self."

It's not such a stretch for Starbucks to be promoting poetry. The Starbucks Foundation funds numerous literary efforts on the local and national level and has been involved with the new Seattle Public Library. Will Starbucks become more involved with libraries in the future? Concludes Brewster, "I agree that it would be great to have a booklet like this in every library reading room."