The American Scene; Poetry in Chicago

Good morning. This is Howard Vincent, viewing the arts for the American scene for the Illinois Institute of Technology. First, let me read you a few words. And I lie there watching her through it like some sick Adam with a codec, afraid, wanting to be alone, dead, wanting to make a stranger of Eve. I scratch myself and keep on watching her. Stuff like that is published every month in Chicago. A little surprising to come out of materialistic, hard -headed, money -making Chicago. But that is poetry. I may not have recognized this such because of the way I read it, but it is. And there is poetry in Chicago. There has been. There's an honorable tradition of it. And it's a subject worth exploring. Most people forget about poetry anyhow. And they forget about, when they think about Chicago, they forget especially hard. But let's think about today in the place of poetry in Chicago's life. The magazine that you saw in the beginning

is one of the glories of Chicago's history. Surprisingly enough, we talk about making the river run backwards. We talk about building after the fire. But this little volume, poetry magazine, has probably had a tremendous effect over the years as those events. Maybe not a material effect, but an intellectual effect. And I want to talk about the subject today with a colleague of mine from Illinois Institute of Technology, Professor Samuel Workman, who the summer is editorial director of the poetry seminar of Chicago. And a very distinguished teacher of literature at the Illinois Institute of Technology, one of the finest teachers of poetry and of literature in the country, in my opinion. He has finished a book recently on the analysis of poetry and an introduction to poetry for his he calls it facetiously poetry for the bourgeoisie. But it's an excellent and clear -headed book helping us to move into the realm of the strange world of poetry. And I want to talk with Dr. Workman this morning about that subject. Dr. Workman, here we are in the

question of poetry in Chicago. What is the history of poetry in Chicago? What is it all began in 1933 or now? Oh no, this magazine itself has a long history. 1912, wasn't it? 1912, yes. And before that, the person who founded it then, they now very famous Harriet Monroe. For years before that, had been campaigning for poetry and by 1912, it was Carl Sandberg. There were other people in Chicago. And... But it is Harriet Monroe. It's Harriet Monroe. You know that 1893, old, she read at the Columbia Exposition. It's always startled me, but she was able to get that on the program. She was a determined little character. She must have been. You never read the old, have you? No, no. No. But she never mind that. In recognition of what America's done, she had poetry there. And then in the years it followed, writing poetry herself and making these beef barons, et cetera, et cetera. To give money to found this thing. That's one of the hardest parts about it, not to get contributors. They're plenty right here in town. But to get money to print.

And this magazine prints nicely, doesn't it? Yes, it does. It's been this format all along hasn't practically this form of a little change. It seems to me that's an important thing. I've got some other illustrations over here. To get it set upright so that it doesn't look second -rate or be little... Or two -arty for an art. Or two -arty. That's right. That could be worse, maybe. Here's volume 96. And yet this, here it is, 96 volumes have lasted in this city which people looked on and knows as material money makers. And it goes well. It must be one of the few magazines that is all poetry or all but a few reviews. It's the oldest in the ink world. It's the oldest in the ink world. And one of the few that has gone on for any length of time at all. Well, didn't this magazine, in a sense, discover or give the chance? That was what it did in discovery. It gave the chance to Sandberg and Vaita Lindsay and Edgar Lee Masters. Exactly. This

chance for a chance, it seems to me, is an awfully important thing. For a person who feels like talking in the form that we call poetry. Yes. Because I don't think it's communication. What do you think? He doesn't have a message. No, no, no, no. That isn't why he wants to get into print. No. But after all, you are trying to frame a certain set of experiences in a certain kind of structure. And you like that. That's right. Somebody know about it and communicate. Any experience you have, you like to communicate it with someone. Sure. Anybody who builds a little model will instruct something and thinks he's got a new idea, a nice little turn in there. He wants people to see that. Think of the difference of walking through an art gallery by yourself, which is fun to do at times. But it's somebody who is stampatique and who, you can say, hey, look at that. Sure. How much better it is. Or imagine a man making a picture over great pains and not wanting anyone to see it. All right. There are only two ways to see words. And one of them call it seeing is when they're spoken. Yes. And that's always pretty limited, even with broadcasting.

And what's more, it generally has to be in the right time and place. And the other way is to print it. And there, the very appearance on the page has a great deal to do with the feeling that people would have as to whether it's worth a moment's attention. I sort of wish I'd brought a magazine and you can find them in the stands that's badly printed. Oh, yes. Poor fellows don't have any money to do it, right? But it belittles the stuff, the minute you open the thing and throw an eye at it. It subtly offends the whole sensibility and one is nowhere that he's being offended. He just said, well, I don't like it. That's right. So it was a great thing. Yeah. In 1912, when Harriet Monroe got that started, and it's been a great thing to keep it going ever since, because we don't need to belabor the point that it doesn't have quite the circulation perhaps of a life magazine. No, but it's 96 volumes is pretty impressive. But the impressive thing is that as you and I both know, the history of this, the effect it's had upon the English -speaking world. Now, this is just

a few people read it, and yet this thing has changed. It's writing of poetry. It's changed the sensibility in part of our time. A magazine has contributed to that change. That's right. It came at the right time, I would say. It just happened for reasons it would take us through four of these broadcasts to get talking about enough. It just happened that there were a lot of new creative people all set to go at about this time, and this gave them their chance. Well, the people we think of as the heroes of the 20s were really getting started a few years before through this kind of medium. And my lord, the way they've used language has affected not just novel writers and article writers, but it's affected even advertising and everything else. What this has to do with language. At this time, let's see, in 1912, 1916, 18, along an area in a swimmingway, was a high school student out at Oak Park Illinois. By the way, it was the very first writing. It was poetry. It was poetry. It came out in little magazines. Yes, exactly. There are still dozens every year that come and go.

Dozens of little magazines. Most of them with that unhappy sleaziness in their appearance and great limit in circulation. But they continue all of them. One little way or in a big way, as this one did, to have plenty of influence. Well, now, partly because of this, I'd say the Chicago scene of poetry isn't much different from the national or international scene of poetry. Yes. Well, this acts as a center. We may not take up later our own poets at the present moment. A great deal of activity is in town. I couldn't help singling out this little thing called Midway. It actually has baseball heroes, pictured on the front, and it's by no means a poetry magazine in the way that one is. But it publishes new poetry. Here are several pages of it. In the midst of articles on Chicago baseball and in Chicago business and so on. Chicago education. What are you going to say? Well, I'm just being facetious. Chicago's baseball at this moment. That's not subject for a poem.

No. Well, it is. And here's another one. Well, this is famous. Chicago, little magazine. Yes. Chicago review. And again, that isn't, you know, just for poetry. But it publishes a lot of poetry. And publishers are it publishes fiction and nonfiction. But it's one of the products of the... Oh, I think people in general are surprised. I admit I'm constantly surprised to realize what a large number of people create even producing people there are in this town that we do. Town, as you said, do associate with business and industry, as it's primary claim to fame. And I'm not going to challenge that. I simply mean that there is a great, great deal of activity. And these two both coming out of people one way and another. Now or in the recent past connected with University of Chicago. There are two quite different magazines. But both interested in poetry. This is number four of a new one. Oh, yes. That's the latest. The latest. Big table.

There's history in that too. The... The publishers. Editors like this. Yes. They go in much more for poetry than the last two I was looking at. But they include art. This is a New Yorker's book. Well, I get it right. As it happens, that's better. Yes. I don't know whether Franz Klein will see this broadcast. But he would have notions about that. Yes. It was a fold -in in this magazine. You know, that one got started. Well, there's history there. I suppose there's seeds of history and all these matters. Paul Carroll, who is the present editor of Big Table, and who now in a year has done four issues, was at one time on the staff of the Chicago reviewer. I remember there was a couple of years ago. A couple of years ago, yes. And they, well, is school of poetry. Let's use the awful word. It makes people froth or green or cheer. He has roughly been associated with the poets called

Beats. And sometimes their way of talking is not exactly campus, I suppose, or rather lecture hall. And the authorities at the University of Chicago decided that a certain issue they had put together was not quite of that tone. So they simply moved the whole staff out, contributions and all, and started a magazine of their own, which took, though, a lot of doing financially. The job always is to find somebody who will help pay for it because you can't count on sales. It's done very well. Pretty slick job. Yeah, another nicely printed one. Yes, it'll be printed. Well, that part of it was expensive to get in. I mean, the picture that you were showing. Well, what we're saying is that here are four Midway Big Table poetry, Chicago Review, four magazines, in which there's a tremendous amount of new poetry. That's not very many cities that could equal that. I mean, New York might, but just because of your cast. No, there's more history of learning. I'll tell you. This poetry seminar, that you've connected

me with. I'm just summer shepherd for them. The only John Logan is, I'm not sure he isn't part founder of this group of, they're generally young executives, sometimes married couples, that all people understood in promoting, or it seems they were cultivating poetry, and got together about a year ago. And they do all kinds of things. Any TV directors there? Among them they could be. They could be. Yes. They don't say so at the time. Oh, they keep asking. Yes. I really don't know what, how they earned the money that they partly spend on the typewriters and paper pounding out the stuff, but they don't just write it. They're the ones who brought E. Cummings here. Yes. Last winter for reading at the Great Northern that sold the house out. They brought Robert Lowell. They brought Kenneth Rex Roth about a month ago. And that's just one way they cultivate it. They invite students in colleges where there is no opportunity to give

courses in writing. They invite those students if they want to write, to send them their manuscripts, and they put in their time a little charity of theirs going over those carefully and writing advisory notes to the students. That's a labor of love. Yes, but it's also a great pleasure to labor a love but it's a pleasure to be able to do it. To be able to do it. Well, I haven't seen the poems I get, but I assume that some of them would give pleasure in any case. Well, it's always pleasant to take somebody else's poetry apart, which is what I do all the time. That and only that. Well, this is John Logan's book. That's John Logan's book. Just out. Ghosts of the Heart. It's a very attractive cover here. That's right. You're in the car. You're speaking of good getting up. That's a hold to the camera. Oh, excuse me. Go ahead. I think the inside of it is worth. Let me stick to that cover a minute. We're talking a format here so much. Oh, beautiful. That's the story. We're already nowhere on color. I know whether that can be called Maroon or not, but he's from the University of Chicago,

too. Yes. And the University of Chicago Press got that out. Yes. I think I may be wrong by a month or two, but I think it is the first book of poems, nothing but poems at the University Press, and is new poems by a new writer that the University Press has done on their own. I think you're wrong. Yeah, the University Press has it all the time. New poems. New poems. The University Press series. I don't bother them anymore. Harvard, Harvard's done something. All right. Even Harvard. They didn't go into this color, too. Let's get back to the middle. All right. Because just in this good year, 1960, two other University Presses, Nebraska and Indiana, have just brought out for the first time for them. At least, I'm pretty sure, have brought out new poems by unknown poets or unknown to any public of any size at all. So once more, lots of ferment right here and close by around. Well, is there anything about this poetry that they're writing, which is especially Midwestern, especially Chicago, or is such a thing possible? Is that the way it used to be possible? No one can

be persuaded that Sandberg, isn't a Chicago poet, though he's read. That's right. Some people would say that's a big relief to some other sections, but on the other hand, there's some good poetry there. Of course. I don't think that at present time, you could distinguish a Chicago school of poets or any other writers, even if they're writing about things that they experienced in Chicago. You could distinguish a London school or a New York school, except by the references and they would mode be accident. It's going international in the same way that I think. Painting and music and most other architecture and so on. We tried the other day when Alan Frumpkin was on to define the modern school of Chicago painters. And he tried, but we weren't very successful. Energy, so on. But there's energy in New York inside of it. It's just going in Tokyo, I imagine. Yeah. The energy associated with the beats hasn't been commonly a Chicago product, though. Here is this magazine in Chicago now, and there are many an operator of that school in town.

I'd say, though, in general, if there is a tendency among Chicago writers, it's toward an increased planeness, less rigidity, more directness, a statement so that you think at the moment, at least, that you know pretty much what they're talking about. This is a movement that's been going on for 150 years. Where did you try it? To purify the dialect of the tribe. All right, and the tribe quickly decides that it needs something a little more intense. That's right. If it's going to talk above the level of ordinary conversation. That's right. But this purification is constantly needed, isn't it? That's right. Because once they got set in a way that worked for a while, that becomes either outmoded or overworked, and somebody has to start in a new way. Right. I am not going on record as saying that the beet poets have found it. Or even that this hard dryness of the Chicago poets has found it. And, oh, wait a minute. Here's where Logan's poem is. I'm sorry. That I thought in my door straight with. Well, don't be. I think it's the very first

one in this group. It's going to be time for that. Well, how much is it? Let's go ahead. Let's have it. And this is a little turgid. Yep. It seems to me that statement by statement, at least, you sense you feel what he's talking about, and that the accumulation of them is partly like a very clear memory and partly like a nightmare. And I think it's meant to be that strange mixture. All right. Let's have it. It's one of the monologues of the Son of Saul. Also, our first load of honey -heavy Christmas trees, then the sweet Christ comes again. See, in the high truck bed, the greens spring easy as the thighs of young lovers, while a aromatic golden gun, gift of the magis oozes under the light cover of

snow, rising slowly as the milk of the dead. Mothers will survive these rights of birth. It is said, we prove it by our liturgy. But I do not believe my own theory, and I'm cursed to figure out how I was blessed at the core of my heart by a man sitting underneath the flowering tree in a white shirt open at the throat, dark face lucid, saying the stories of a father for me. Yet I have thieved my father's treasure, and I cannot pay. On my naked birthday, I brought to bed his amber -haired, shy -eyed wife, her face birch white against the linen loaf or coffin of her pillow. Now, advent, her quilted copper coffin glows again with a green harlot light inside my head. Oh,

I've tried boyishly before today to lay her virgin ghost in this enormous house, but still I feel her black teeth click and push at the roots of its dying blood or apple -colored bush. Well, fast -moving a lot of material in there, a lot of material in there, but you have to go work at it. That's right. Once over lightly like that won't give it, and yet it seems to me, and then you sense the boldness of putting together these Christmas and liturgical things with a sense of rebirth and of some guilt of his own at being the cause of birth. And yet it's worth it, and this is the funny thing about part, is that people think you've got to get the whole thing right of the glance. That's absurd. Anything you don't get a Mozart symphony, you may think you do, but you don't. And you certainly don't get a Schunberg quartet at a first hearing. You've got to work out, and why people won't do it. They think they can grab this the way they grab advertising for toothpaste.

Sure. To expect to understand it, the way you understand the AP dispatch on the front page of your paper, that's, I think, the assumption that they should be able to is what scares so many people away from the stuff. They just realize in the first place that it is a construction that has to be looked into in order to appreciate it, just as you do a model locomotive or something, for that matter. But then in the second place, you're not supposed to take it too darn seriously. This is not a thought for today. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not serious necessarily. That's not serious necessarily. I'm telling you, you take it seriously, but you can take it easily and enjoyably. Oh, sure. But seriously, it's to take you and take it pompously and more realistically and did it. Sure. Oh, yes. Well, that is one of the greatest errors. Don't you find it in your classes? Oh, over time. They must find a message. That's right. It takes a little bit of going over this to get people out of that mind. I don't know why you can't just say, get out of that

mind, and then they'll be out of it. But there is a habit of so serious. And a tradition I sometimes think early teaching hurts this in poetry. Oh, poetry. They are thought to reverence it, even though they don't understand it. And oh, look, this guy. Wait a minute. See, here I see. Partry is written not with ideas, but with words. A tiger's heart and a player's painted hide. A peels an apple while B kneels to God. C telephones to D, who has a hand on E's knee. F coughs. G turns up the sod for H's grave. I do not understand, but J is bringing one clay pigeon down, while K brings down a night stick on L's head. An M takes mustard. N drives into town. O goes to bed with P and Q drops dead. R lies to S, but happens to be heard by T, who tells you not to fire V for having given W the word that X is now deceiving Y with Z. Who happens just now to remember A? Peeling an apple somewhere far away. Well, take that as a nussage

far. That's fine. There is a metaphysics there, but it's a lot of fun. Sure. A lot of fun. It's in the structure of it, the whole place that that structure called KO, linking, like elephants in that. Linking in the... You're clear around again. You're on the edge. You're on the edge. Yeah, that's right. That's right. A lot of fun. And yet tell me you'll say, now let's look at that and get the... Who is A? Who is A? This is the human... Like a desion human. Man, they'll say. Yes. But it is there, too. Well, this is good that they're doing that. Who wrote that poem? That's not a Chicago man. Sorry, you forced that out of me. That's Howard Numerow. Yes. Well, York boy. Yes, but it's Papa Sincerca. That's it. And so are all these. And glad to be, too. Certainly. There's no condescension. Oh. Our poetry seminar. I didn't go in to tell you. Another thing they're doing to promote. Colivate poetry. You try to start another magazine. They are not of the persuasion of Paul Carroll and his beat so much. They want a less committed magazine. They advertised prizes for their

first issue. They advertise this around the country. And they have gotten well over a thousand submissions from all over the country. And England. May I be rude? What price did they offer? $100. A little dollars. Or $100. And they had a thousand. They had a little over a thousand entries. All right. Now, let's say that X product. A big product. And life magazine. Two -page spread. Advertises. They're going to give away $10 ,000 first prize, $3 ,000, second and so on. They get thousands, maybe close to a million. But considering the amount of money, the amount of the reward, that's not nearly as much. A reaction. That's right. I mean, considering $100. Considering what it is, poetry. This reaction is tremendous. And considering who's sending them in, too. Yes. The well -known people have been publishing other places often for years, as well, of course, as young people who hope to get this start. And so, definitely, that was one of the brilliant ideas that Harry Monroe had to have various wealthy people endow these prizes, which have been in year after year. And poets strive for these the way they used to strive in Greek days for the long wind one. They will.

It's in there right up, young there, who's good, or whatever it is, for the rest of their life, and feel very proud to them. Surely. Rindlin Brooks, by the way, is a Chicago poet, whose name I want to get forward here. Yes, excellent. Who has two poetry prizes that she doesn't hesitate to hang out right along with her poets, her prizes, and Duganheim Fellowship, and other more nationally known things, maybe, or more popularly known things. Do you? Yes, he's a very charming poet. I mean, Charming's too weak of word, but the poems are very appealing. You know, the first one's over lightly. That's how they're very appealing. Very lucid. Very lucid, yes. And yet the more you... Yeah, the further you go, the more you feel. Well, she combines the feelings that fiction writer, story writers can give. Yes. More than, I suppose, the average poet does now. I took me a little walk through a couple of bookstores recently, when I knew this was coming up just to see what sort of fair is offered in a typical Chicago store. I had

particularly thought about it one way or another before, and it was quite instructive and reassuring to an old lover of the art. They had every kind of thing in each of the two stores I looked into. They had your modern European stuff in translation. They had ancient classics in translation. They had all the English classics clear back to Anglo -Saxon. That also in Trans -Wall they had. And then they had the most recent young guys in their 20s. Besides, of course, they established names like Pound and Elliott Frost. Oh, that's perfectly obtainable. It is. Yes, you don't need to love it. I'm laughing and appreciating myself. One here is about how the, you know, how little market there is. Oh, if a book is printed, no store will stock it. And when you look into it, this doesn't seem to be the case, at least in Chicago. Well, now, if, let's say that the poetry has its limited appeal, nevertheless, there is a conscience about poetry. On a part of people of intelligence, a lot of people of intelligence. The book

publishers put out book, year after year, poetry books that lose. Yet they do it. They know they ought to do it. And in other words, poetry is something that they are willing to support because they realize its value. They enjoy it themselves and so they support it. And I think a lot of people, and a lot of people who don't read poetry, feel very guilty about not reading it. I would say, you know, that's guilty, you're in read it. Well, maybe so. Though I think if there weren't, it's like New York's resolution. Yeah, it feels guilty, but that's all the more reason why you don't do anything about it. Sort of love this guilt feeling, maybe. I think if, you know, that goes with what I was calling the seriousness that you attach to it. You do it out of a duty. Well, that's not the way to pull them. No, no, no. That's the way I draw up a list of 100 best books. I'm going to read these. They never do get out of reading them. In other words, have fun when you're doing this. Sure. Maybe the best way to approach is to approach the way you're doing your book. Some of the simple poems, and they take the simplicity. Then they begin to see the complexity as you demonstrate it to them. That's one way to

do it, all right? Another way is simply to brave the whole stuff and say, this looks odd, but it must be something interesting. Yes. Well, the Samuel Workman, this has been a very amusing session. I hope it's been profitable to everybody listening. The poetry in Chicago. Thank you, Samuel Workman. And we'll take this up again sometime.