Edited By Donald G. Evans
Chicago is like nothing. It’s like everything. There is no universally correct or incorrect answer, only a whole string of correct and incorrect answers.
People not from here ask, “What is your favorite restaurant?”
To reduce to one the gluttony of options would pay disrespect to all those other tremendous places, to rank a swank spot over a delightful dive, or a five-star chef over a street corner vendor. In Chicago you get to experiment and indulge.
People not from here say, “Chicagoans are so friendly!!!”
Meet enough Chicagoans and you’ll find plenty of ornery, petty, vindictive, rude and selfish people, often standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the friendly people, of which, yes, there are a lot.
Chicago is 234 square miles, and that doesn’t count when you tip over into Evanston or Oak Park, zig into Elmwood Park or zag over to Berwyn, venture to Westmont or Barrington or Harvey, meander into any of those places that aren’t but are Chicago.
Around three million people live in Chicago, and the population triples when you calculate the near and near-enough suburbs that constitute “metro” Chicago. Tourists and even some scholars want to reduce Chicago to cliché. Chicago is a tough town. Chicago is the capital of corruption. Chicagoans get things done. Chicago is a blue-collar city. When we leave it to others, Chicago becomes a place where we eat deep- dish pizza and Italian beef sandwiches. We talk like fat Bears fans in an SNL skit. The lake. The el trains. The blues. Violence. There are those who visit Chicago – some over and over – who never make it past Harrison Street to the south, Lake Street to the north, State Street to the west, or the Oak Street beach to the east. Hollywood establishes that we are in Chicago with shots of tall buildings (Willis Tower or the John Hancock, either will do), a looping overhead train, lions outside the Art Institute or the Picasso statue in the Daley Plaza or the marquee outside Wrigley (all, if you can make the cuts quick enough), and of course glittering Lake Michigan.
Those things: all true. All false. Believe me when I say that some of us go long, long stretches without bumping into the Picasso statue or climbing the 94 floors to get a view from the Hancock. We eat pizza and beef sandwiches only as much as pad thai and tacos.
We hunker down in our own neighborhoods, or go to a friend’s. We wear out a path between work and home. We return to our favorite places. We try new ones. Some- times, we are tourists in our own city, packing up a bag, consulting a map, and finding an attraction or experience or neighborhood that heretofore we’d somehow avoided. We do things indoors and outdoors, alone and in huge crowds, out of duty and pleasure.
Chicago does toddle, but only if you’re in the right place at the right time with the right people.
Poets, the good ones, explode small moments and details; they use the particular to get at the large. Poets know that it’s what is here, sure, but it’s also what happens here, how the urban landscape empowers or oppresses, heightens or suppresses, how a city not only makes you feel but how you feel inside that city. Rather than reducing Chicago to a cliché, they strike at its essence.
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This is a world-class assemblage of poets, all with strong connections to Chicago. Among the 134 authors, there are Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, several former Illinois Youth Poet Laureates and the current Illinois Poet Laureate, McArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipients, Cave Canem fellows, Gwendolyn Brooks Award honorees…the accolades are exhaustive. But it’s not just that these poets (many, at least) are decorated. Their own Chicago experiences reflect the city, in all its glory and grime. These poets made their way up through academia, but also the slam scene. Their parents were poor, and rich. They were born here or migrated here. Some date their Chicago roots back to the early settlers, some to the Great Migration; some came here to escape violence in their homelands, others came here to take a lucrative job. Some passed through on their way to other places (in fact, several went on to become poet laureates of other cities and states). These poets have roots in Costa Rica, Pakistan, Japan, Bosnia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Nigeria, Chile, Cuba, India, Korea. They are from Houston, Beckley, Philadelphia, Enid, and Montgomery, left here for Madison, West Lafayette, San Antonio, New York, and Los Angeles. They are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Buddhist, Hindu. These poets know the South Side and West Side, the North Side and the lakeshore, they know fancy and they know simple, they know tender and they know brutal. A large majority of these poets have been community and institution builders, a lot around their various poetry scenes but in every other imaginable way, as well.
These poets, no matter their circumstances or experiences, have this in common: they care. They care about their city and its people, they care about justice, they care about beauty, they care about decency and compassion, and they apply their considerable gifts in the advancement of their own truth.
What we have here, then, are a lot of truths. Chicago is a blend of all those truths, and the city is at its best when all our stories converge, when the audience is attentive and fascinated, when we glimpse the inner and outer lives of those around us. This anthology takes us to our legendary restaurants and our greatest museums. It views aspects of the city, like the lake, from myriad perspectives. It resurrects the ghosts of Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Kent Foreman, and David Hernandez, as well as Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson. These poems wander in time from Chicago as outpost to Chicago during the pandemic. It takes the CTA all around town, and pauses at no- table monuments. These are magical poems, language poems, free verse poems, hip hop poems. These are odes, haikus, and sonnets.
These poets all lived and breathed the Chicago air. Regardless of when or where or how they experienced our city, it became, forever, a part of their identity.
What is Chicago like?
This is what it’s like. And this. And this. And this. And the other.
Related Feature: One Question: Donald G. Evans
Donald G. Evans is the author of a novel and short story collection, and editor of two anthologies, including Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry. The new Chicago poetry anthology (release date: June 13th, 2022) features more than 150 artists, all with strong connections to and work centering on the city. He is the Founding Executive Director of the Chicago Literacy Hall of Fame.
https://chicagoliteraryhof.org/poetry_anthology