Wherever I'm At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry ed. by Donald G. Evans and Robin Metz (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Wherever I'm At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry ed. by Donald G. Evans and Robin Metz
• Mark Fishbein (bio)

wherever i'm at: an anthology of chicago poetry Edited by Donald G. Evans and Robin Metz
After Hours Press and Third World Press
https://thirdworldpressfoundation.org/product/wherever-im-at-an-anthology-of-chicago-poetry/
311 pages; Print, $25.00

I am a poet, and a city boy, spending most of my life in Manhattan with a few years in Paris and a decade in Washington, DC. So I guess I'm a city snob. My son found himself in Chicago after college and is raising his family there, so I have visited quite frequently over the past twenty years. What was Chicago to me? "Perhaps a nice place to live," I often said, "but I wouldn't want to visit." Especially in winter, when even the penguins avoid it. It's the place where the man danced with his wife in the famous song. Deep-dish pizza to send you to the ER. Great if your passion is sky scrapper Architecture (capital A!). Eliot Ness and Al Capone. Paul Butterfield Blues Band telling me son, you better get a gun.

Last week, at the time of this writing, I moved here, permanently. Family first. How serendipitous to be asked to review an anthology of 134 poets offering a poem with Chicago as the theme? How better to discover the soul of a city? Here poets were asked to do what Whitman did for New York, Baudelaire and Apollinaire for Paris, Keats for Rome, and Sandburg for Chicago (whose name is sadly not to be found in the preface or introduction, and only in 2 of the 134 poems). [End Page 127]

The sheer size of this collection is staggering. What is Chicago poetry? In the foreword, Carlo Rotella states:

And I'd argue that Gwendolyn Brooks emerges here as the presiding figure of Chicago's poetic tradition.

Surely a great poet, she, along with James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and so many others, has universally redefined the Black experience in the twentieth century. Her easy style and use of dialects mixed with elegance have influenced all poetry, not only the 29 percent of the Chicago population being "Black or African American" according to the census. But there is no "school" of Chicago poetry I can decipher here, only the kaleidoscope of styles familiar in today's poetry anthologies.

As the posted theme of this book is "Chicago," all the poems do mention something about the city: a street, a neighborhood, local stores, clubs, restaurants, or parks, but place is most often secondary to the narrative in the poem, as agreed by Mr. Rotella:

Some of the subject matter that inspires the writers here may resemble what you'd find in Dayton, New York, or Shanghai, but some of it is uniquely Chicago based.

Virtually every poem in this collection is polished, well crafted, "professional," and deserves publication. A great many are outstanding and memorable. But I would have preferred a shorter and more focused collection of poems more connected to the "Hog Butcher for the World." I bookmarked 35 of the 134 poems which felt fully connected to the experience of living in Chicago: rich imagery of the city landscape and Lake Michigan, the trains and public transportation, the extreme weather, the ethnicity, jazz and blues, and the sense of community with sacred oaths and desperate despair. Strangely, no one mentioned that Chicago is also one of the centers for poetry in the United States, home of the Poetry Foundation, Poetry magazine, and famous university presses.

Before going further, the collection also offers twenty-seven illustrations, photos, and graphics, many of which are spellbinding. They are well placed and insightful. The editing and formatting of this book show great care, despite the over-ambitious attempt. [End Page 128]

The introduction begins with the question "What is Chicago like?" and ends with this thought:

What is Chicago like?This is what it's like. And this. And this. And this.And the other.

Michigan Avenue is not the same as Fifth Avenue in New York. Downtown presents a...