“Your letter breathes on my bedside table--a form of goodnight.�
Jenn Morea’s The Hyacinth Letter (2025) is a poThe Possibility of a Fusion of Horizons
“Your letter breathes on my bedside table--a form of goodnight.�
Jenn Morea’s The Hyacinth Letter (2025) is a poetry collection I know well, as she is a close friend. I’ve read this book in various drafts over the years and have seen it evolve. Why wasn’t it published before? Because the main way poetry seems to get published (from a publisher and not self-publishing, which is another honorable way to get your work out there) is to win a poetry contest, often facing hundreds of submissions, which she was close to winning a few times, and now she did win a poetry contest, The Sappho Prize in Poetry, sponsored by Headmistress Press.
The poetry is minimalist, spare--think Emily Dickinson and Paul Celan--where less is said than felt. It was in part inspired by Morea’s reading of this book: Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952-1964. (Carson, Rachel, Dorothy Freeman, and Martha E. Freeman. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994). Martha is Dorothy’s granddaughter, who lives in Maine and whom Morea visited one summer to also visit Carson’s archives nearby. The story of Carson’s and Freeman’s love also resonated deeply with Morea’s life.
Dorothy was legally married (to a man, of course), but she also fell in love with Rachel, a relationship of many years. But how is we can characterize their love, forbidden by/hidden from society? Emily Dickinson said about poetry, “tell the truth, but tell it slant,� and maybe this can be said of letters, sometimes. People in totalitarian countries tell their stories so that others can begin to understand, but those tellings may be muted, coded, metaphorical, of few words.
Thus, Morea’s poems often feature very few words on the page. Just enough to get a sense of the story behind the words, the unsaid, the secret, the intense longing and deep understanding. Reading between the lines, we say. Morea’s afterword helps us understand the poetry’s relationship to the Carson-Freeman letters; the couple refers to coincidences and serendipitous moments as “stardust.� Some of their letters they refer to as “apples,� named after a small wooden apple that opens up to find a smaller apple inside. And as Martha Freeman explains, “Rachel Carson wrote her ‘hyacinth letter� to my grandmother to explain the ‘lovely companionship of your letters� which provided for her a ‘white hyacinth for [her] soul.’�
Morea arranges her poems in five sections: In a space along a margin of a field (a kind of invitation to readers: “In here with me please come�); Apples; The hyacinth letter; Apples, and In a space along a margin of a field (again, another kind of invitation, but also the place a certain rare flower was discovered--see later).
An earlier title for this book was Correspondences, which of course refers to letters, but also to relations, connections made through relationships, through exchanged language. Of course, Rachel Carson was an environmentalist, ecological researcher and lyrical celebrant of the natural world, as in books such as The Sea Around Us, so nature plays a role in these poems. We also can “correspond� through our connections with each other through our close observation of the natural world. Language is a site of correspondence--words attached to objects, actions, feelings--but also to the act of correspondence through an exchange of language.
These connections are not limited to the written word, of course; these moments of connection can take place in the shared experience of art, beauty-- the planet in all its riches--and physical connections. And through our reading texts; for instance, letters, and these poems. Morea’s poems invite us into a world of intimacy, in the way that reading any exchange of letters might do. Secrecy. Things are unsaid, but if you read more slowly, more closely, they are nevertheless said, and revealing. Language, as Celan makes clear, both discloses and closes, reveals and conceals. Expression embodies the inexpressible, as in, for instance, the legally and socially “unsanctioned� love relationships between women.
“Into a mouth/of night I slip/another/letter. This one/says take me/to your hidden/ places--trust--�
The photographer Diane Arbus wrote, "A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know." This is a common way some people think of language now, that we can’t know what language means or know each other or ourselves through it. I don’t think that Morea would necessarily disagree with Arbus, though in these poems she fiercely embraces the metaphysical assumption that language can still also work the other way, too, that it can reveal.
“I am trying to tell you. On the way to the place I tried to tell you and on the way from the place I tried to tell you� but she can’t, she stops short of “actually� saying what she has actually already said in some other modality, what they both know. Language is a kind of apple that opens up to find another apple inside. It can both conceal/reveal, not say/say simultaneously.
Then of course poetry is about the revealing/concealing mechanisms of metaphor, too: � A field/of birds is an outline of a shoulder in a room�. Words can help you see the relations, the correspondences, between things.
These relations that Morea explores happen in a kind of liminal space, along the “margin� of a field, in the shadows, in the hidden dark (and deeper richness) of night: “The water’s unseen edge,� “gradual light,� “between the paths.� The exchange of letters occurs in a site, a kind of metaphysical place, where feelings and thoughts are exchanged. The voice in corresponded language is seen as a kind of “holding� in the absence of physical touching, but it also creates actual physical and cognitive effects--desire, love, understanding.
“The world fits inside the word for it/A hand comes into/ a hand, narrating/ I see what I look like/seeing you�
“Lines of desire night blur a bird/bringing back a star’s arm�
So Morea’s poems are a kind of poetic exploration of/encounter with the ways letters work as correspondence, as language, in relationship deepening, but also how all letters (and maybe also talk, language itself, and certainly poetry) may work in and through language. It happens, Morea reminds us, in the reciprocal acts of reading and writing.
Motifs weave through Morea’s sweet poems: The color blue, stars, night, shadows, dreams. These poems are at the same time muted--a shy glance, discreet--and also exuberant, ecstatic, intimate. One image in the last section that has metaphorical weight for the whole project of writing letters and poetry is of a “ghost flower� that was discovered “in a space along the margin of a field� in a southeastern Chicago prairie by botanist Julia Pfeiffer in 1912.
Pfeiffer collected the flower for five consecutive summers, naming it Thismia americana. It was seen each year emerging just a scant quarter of an inch above the ground, growing without photosynthesis, just a glimpse of thrilling beauty, concealed for so long, and then barely, but just enough, revealed. Like the language in a minimalist poem, just barely revealing, mostly concealed, and yet astonishing. The flower has not been seen sinec 2016. Is it extinct? Ask Jenn Morea (and me): No way. Searches each year continue for it, more than a hundred years later.
In thinking of the reveal/conceal conundrum in the philosophy of language I am reminded of the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, who was principally interested in writing about conflict that happens in dialogue, in ideological exchange, that can sometimes get resolved, even momentarily, in shared understanding. No objective knowledge exists, no complete understanding occurs forever, but participants in dialogue--in correspondence, through language--may sometimes establish a shared context through this "fusion" of their horizons. It’s the image of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, those two fingers touching, even momentarily.
So Morea seems to be saying in these poems that the fusion of horizons can happen, too, in relationships, in emotion, in love--even for moments--in part through language, through metaphor. A wonderful collection, brava, finally emerging out of the ground in time for spring here in Chicago.like a rare flower!
I read Indemnity Only, the V.I. Warshawski detective novel by Sara Paretsky with my fall 2024 detective fiction class and many in the class didn't lovI read Indemnity Only, the V.I. Warshawski detective novel by Sara Paretsky with my fall 2024 detective fiction class and many in the class didn't love it, or V.I., who was intended as a feminist answer to The Boy's Club of Dick Lit (detective fiction, now, come on!). That book was her first novel, published in 1982, and while many applauded her taking on the male detective fiction establishment, others in my class felt it was "dated" as a kind of feminist statement, a novel that revealed itself to them as an okay first try.
And yet Sara Paretsky achieved international fame for her series, so to be fair I thought I would read another one, and picked the most recent one, Pay Dirt, published 42 years later, in 2024! That's staying power, right? This one is set in Lawrence, Kansas, where the Iowa-born Paretsky went to uni before moving to Chicago. But it is also written by Paretsky at 77, maybe not ideal either for luring young readers to V.I.? We'll see.
Students noted in class discussions of Indemnity that there are no discussions of race; all the people in the novel are white, in a very diverse city. There are discussions of class, sexism, mob corruption and Vic gives as good as she gets in physical altercations with bad guys, and she dumps a boyfriend who doesn't respect her work. In Pay Dirt we are in Lawrence, Kansas, where Vic , still struggling with male romantic partners, goes to take a break from a brutal case (I assume detailed in Warshawski #21?). She’s going to see a Northwestern versus Kansas women’s soccer game, and one girl disappears, so she agrees to help.
There are many contemporary issues--too many, I think--mentioned in this book, from CRT to climate change to sexism to corporate corruption, opioid addition, and racism, and I'm a left, but instead of being inspired, for the majority of the book, I was largely bored, and bored, too, by V.I.’s annoying haranguing of a local detective as she investigates the girl’s disappearance (tec fic trope, check, and tec fic trope, too, that she becomes a suspect, yawn).
The plot gets very complicated, as she herself ponders all the balls she has to juggle: “Sabrina. Valerie. Power Ranger. Brett Santich. Trig. Clarina. Gertrude Perec. Cady. The Wakarusa plant. The Yancy project. The Omicron boys. The Dundee House� (Yes, they all somehow tie together). Vic goes to a house where college kids are dealing drugs, and one of the injured players is in fact a buyer, but in doing her research about the house leads her to investigate historic racial violence in Lawrence. Environmental crime and corporate and police corruption are involved, with Vic getting beat up along the way to solving the case. Tec fic trope: Nobody wants outsider Chicagoan in Lawrence business, except maybe a young Lois Lane cub reporter I also found annoying.
Paretsky tells us in an afterword that she has situated four of her novels in Lawrence, where her early years were spent. She also tells us that it took her a long time to come to terms with and investigate deeper into Kansas racist history, which I admire her doing. Point for that, for sure, and I like in the afterword her telling us the books she read to inform her novel.
I didn’t like the way characters talked to each other--some outdated lingo for contemporary America--though some of my problem with it may have to do with my disliking the reader, who reads lines from corrupt guys as if she were mimicking Jimmy Cagney playing Al Capone. 2.5 rating from me, though I thought it finished strong, so round up. ...more
Timely picture book celebrating the role Ida B. Wells played in the women's suffrage movement. Black men were allowed to vote in 1870; white women couTimely picture book celebrating the role Ida B. Wells played in the women's suffrage movement. Black men were allowed to vote in 1870; white women could vote thanks to the passage of the 19th amendment, but it was not until 1965, the year of the Voting Rights Act!!!! This is a well-researched book with lots of information relevant to the 2024 election. Every step of the way there was resistance and violence against women and blacks for being recognized as human beings, when they were legally allowed to vote, but the emphasis in this book is positive on the persistence of women such as Wells to never give up. We learn who she is and why she was of historical significance, marching for justice....more
I've read other issues in this series by Caroline Cash, Peepee Poopoo, that I am sure you will be disappointed to find has no peepee poopoo in it. Or I've read other issues in this series by Caroline Cash, Peepee Poopoo, that I am sure you will be disappointed to find has no peepee poopoo in it. Or maybe it does, I forget. It sure has vomit in it, from excessive drinking. A series of cartoons and short comics reflections written, the (great) cover says,"for girls and gays." So, since I am neither of the indicated target audiences, consider the source, but I liked this a lot.
Cash is a really good cartoonist with lots of potential. This series seems to be (in part?) a kind of queer homage to sixties alt-comix, as the cover reference to Daniel Clowes's Eightball makes clear. She's funny, snarky, insightful, and she writes of a kinda sideways twenty-something life in Chicago. I read her Girl in the World and used it in one of my comics classes and everyone dug it. I think when she finds some subject/story to create in greater depth, maybe in long form fashion, it will be great. I'm a fan. ...more
Tender is a graphic novel set in Chicago about Carolanne, a woman who like many people sets goals for her life. Her goals include a house, husband, chTender is a graphic novel set in Chicago about Carolanne, a woman who like many people sets goals for her life. Her goals include a house, husband, children--the perfect life! why not me?--and sure enough, there's a sweet guy, who loves her! One piece of the puzzle! But when things begin to unravel, and hard things happen to her, as they will, her mental health unravels as well, and a carefully-paced and well drawn sad story evolves, complete with body horror. I thought it was a really well done sad/scary story which maybe (because it is a woman with rather conventional domestic goals), maybe speaks to feminist themes (on the expectations for women, or the expectations they set for themselves)? I thought it was--because it is psychological horror--somewhat disturbing, which is also to say well done for what it sets out to do....more
I don’t usually read big splash “women's fiction� just as it comes out but it sort of fell into my hands. From the cover I thought it might be a kind I don’t usually read big splash “women's fiction� just as it comes out but it sort of fell into my hands. From the cover I thought it might be a kind of feminist reflection on “beauty,� as in Zadie Smith’s book On Beauty, or something, but nope: What emerges is a kind of contemporary update on Little Women. Is it possible that any novel with four daughters could not reference Little Women? Or maybe Pride and Prejudice? But this one mentions Alcott’s novel early on, the daughters all know the book and identify themselves as different characters throughout. It doesn’t map itself as precisely as Demon Copperhead does on David Copperfield, but it is still a sisters/family book, the Padavano family, at its very foundation.
Oh, and the title: Charming but struggling Dad greets his girls every day by saying “Hello, beautiful�. And it’s an Evanston/Chicago story, though of course there is some diaspora, including Julia’s moving to Manhattan (as in Little Women), and mom moving to Florida. There’s a sister writing a novel about the family, there’s art about the family, there’s two women in love with the same man, divorce, death, and a lesbian daughter. It’s a family saga of the eighties and beyond, not really about the world beyond this circumscribed family world.
The book sort of tacks back and forth between William, a Northwestern basketball player and each of the sisters, from their perspectives, and then Julia and William’s daughter. William is a basketball guy so I liked that, as a basketball guy.
Re: William and depression issues: “You don’t seem excited we are having this baby.� Julia says to William. It took him a moment to think what excitement is.
I liked it okay! I’m not a big sprawling multigenerational family saga novel guy, especially one told from the perspective of several different characters, but I love Little Women and like the connection. It’s more about family/character than most literary fiction I read. It’s not edgy, but inspirational, as this family and William face challenges. Was I moved by [arts of it? Of course! I'm not a jerk! Sure, I cried a couple times! Sure I screamed at mom and Julia! ...more
Well! A pro wrestling comic that actually engaged me! Lona, who lost her mom, a one-time wrestling great, also wants into the world of wrestling. She Well! A pro wrestling comic that actually engaged me! Lona, who lost her mom, a one-time wrestling great, also wants into the world of wrestling. She is eventually invited by a wrestling-obsessed necromancer who wants her to enter the greatest pro wrestling tourney ever, where if you win you can make a wish to bring back someone from the dead. Not in? Too crazy for ya? Oh, just go with it, folks. It's pro-wrestling! There's no such thing as over-the-top. It defines over-the-top.
And that might also apply to all of the work of Daniel Warren Johnson, who also did a comic about metal (that's a kind of music, old folkies) (like me) called Murder Falcon, and a series called, not to state an obvious connection, Extremity. Sound like enough testosterone for ya, boys? Well, Johnson is a great action sequence artist, with plenty of emotion, and some heart. And guess what, my high school wrestling daughter liked, it, too. I'm off to a day of girl's wrestling! ...more
Charles Johnson was awarded the National Book Award for his 1990 novel about slavery, The Middle Passage. This is the first time I had heard of him; hCharles Johnson was awarded the National Book Award for his 1990 novel about slavery, The Middle Passage. This is the first time I had heard of him; he wrote fiction. It was not until I had moved to Chicago and was collecting Chicago coming-of-age stories for the book I and my co-editors published, Growing up Chicago (Northwestern UP, 2022) that he submitted a story he had written about growing up in Chicago, or Evanston, technically.
The story, "My Father's Pillow Talk," was about the nightly talks Johnson had with his father before going to bed. The heart of the story was a time in which the teenaged Charles told his father that what he wanted to do when he grew up was to become a cartoonist, a notion that his father discouraged. But become a cartoonist was exactly what he did, beginning with his high school newspaper, moving to his college newspaper and on to community writing, beginning in the Chicago area. He went on to publish book collections of his cartoons.
This book collects his 1965-75 cartoons, including the work from his books, most of them political humor work focused on racism, raising issues as people did in the sixties about the possibility of a (black) revolution in the light of the years of civil unrest regarding racial inequities. I lived two hours from Chicago, and I am white, so I would not have read much if any of black political cartooning out of the radical left, because I didn't have access to the south side black newspapers, so it is great to have this beautiful hard cover collection of his work, with his commentary and an afterword. It's a kind of revelation, a gift, to black Chicago, but to Chicago and black history....more
Chicagoan Anya Davidson is a musician and comics artist with a queer punk sensibility. This one checks a lot of boxes: Diverse/queer representation, dChicagoan Anya Davidson is a musician and comics artist with a queer punk sensibility. This one checks a lot of boxes: Diverse/queer representation, differently shaped bodies, growing up, the environment. Dana and Lily do filmed pranks, and one gets them in trouble, but the principal, instead of kicking them out of school, requires them to take a filmmaking class where they make a monster film, with the help of local activist and witch Daphne Ocean. Climate change figures in the tale. Making art! Davidson's style is bold, pulpy, garishly colored, with thick digital lines, not delicate ethereal work, not at all. 3.5 rounded up for Halloween....more
"And when you give love to something, it will give back to you."
My third picture book by Chicago illustrator Diana Sudyka, an ambitious work for young"And when you give love to something, it will give back to you."
My third picture book by Chicago illustrator Diana Sudyka, an ambitious work for younger readers about ecosystem, and caring for the land, past, present and future. The illustrations, gouache paintings with Chagall-like swirling fantasy rooted in science and ecological history, are the centerpiece of this lovely, colorful work. I recommend this and her other books to you!...more
“Barbie-Q� (1991) by Sandra Cisneros was first published in Woman Hollering Creek. It’s flash fiction, just two short pages, focusing on two girls who“Barbie-Q� (1991) by Sandra Cisneros was first published in Woman Hollering Creek. It’s flash fiction, just two short pages, focusing on two girls who play with their Barbies together, though they are not rich and don’t have elaborate wardrobes or even a Ken doll to enhance their play. But it doesn’t matter, it’s all imaginative play. The always do the same scenario; they imagine that one girl’s Barbie steals the boyfriend of the other Barbie, and they fight over the imagined boy.
This story is set in Chicago, maybe in the seventies, where the girls get dragged one Saturday to the flea market on Maxwell Street (gone, alas, torn down to make way for Mayor Daley’s public university in Chicago, UIC ), where. . . Eureka! There’s a lot of Barbies and outfits and other dolls on sale there!! Unreal moment! And what is the occasion for the sale? A toy manufacturer on Halsted burned down, so the smoky merchandise gets sold on Maxwell Street! Gender, poverty, Chicago, joy. I can feel it.
Reading conducted in conjunction with the short story group but also because of the Barbie movie, summer 2023. ...more
Historical fiction mystery (ŷ friend calls it mystorical fiction, cool) set during WWII, with particular focus on the Japanese internment and Historical fiction mystery (ŷ friend calls it mystorical fiction, cool) set during WWII, with particular focus on the Japanese internment and the ill treatment of Japanese-Americans (though all Asians were mistreated for Pearl Harbor, even though they were American citizens. Aki Ito and her parents are released from Manzanar to Chicago, though they had previously been living in the LA area. Why? Most of the property of those interned had that property "confiscated" (I.e., stolen) and so they were shipped to other parts of the country.
They were going to meet Aki's older sister Rose there but when they arrived they were informed that she had committed suicide. Aki doesn't believe it; they had just been in contact with Rose, and no one believes she would have done it. Aki lands a plum job at the Newberry Library, but her real work is to investigate the death of her sister, something that is of course complicated by the distrust and animosity against Japanese-Americans of the time. The CPD just quickly closed the case and they won't even allow any Japanese-Americans to be buried in Chicago cemeteries.
I have been reading many edgy noir stories, and though some of what Aki uncovers is graphic in her search of the gritty Clark & Division neighborhood of the forties, the tone of the book seems constrained in various ways by the "good girl" expectations of Aki's time period and culture. It feels more like a YA novel in terms of tone and diction except in a few more graphic places. Part of my reading is informed by the sweet audio voicing of the reader of this book. But the book is told from the perspective of 19-20-year old, Aki, who is so sheltered from her parents that this seems like a coming-of-age story.
I have read way more LA crime books than Chicago ones, so I liked the local references, and I like the political commitments and historical background about the Japanese internment. A sad period. I like it that it is narrated by a twenty year woman. I haven't read many crime books with similar narrators, of course, so that's a plus. Class differences are explored, too, as we have a range of Japanese Americans here; Aki, whose father struggles with alcohol and is a janitor, dates a young man whose father is a grocer. Aki meets tough guys in her search for answers, too.
I also like the conclusion, which surprised me a bit. But it is not quite edgy enough for me, over all. ...more
I live in/around Chicago so have seen Tracy Letts act on the Steppenwolf Theater stage (and in films) many times. And I have seen a few of his plays. I live in/around Chicago so have seen Tracy Letts act on the Steppenwolf Theater stage (and in films) many times. And I have seen a few of his plays. I'm a fan. It says on his bio here that he thinks of his major influences as Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Jim Thompson. I can see that. But I think of his most celebrated play, August: Osage County, as his Eugene O'Neill play, and his plays such as Superior Donuts as David Mamet plays--Chicago plays, focused on Chicago language and characters. In the vein of Glengarry Glen Ross and American Buffalo. Character-driven plays. And maybe in part because of the violence in them I am reminded here of the plays of Sam Shepherd, too.
Arthur, a late fifties sort of ex-hippie, owns the independent Superior Donuts and one day it gets vandalized. A neighborhood cop, Randy (a woman) wants to try to figure it out. Then a kid, Franco, walks in, and wants a job. He's writing The Great American Novel, at 20, he is deep in debt for gambling, as Arthur resists his own attraction to Randy, and resists selling his place to Max. Friendships develop, we like these people. we laugh with them. I know Uptown Chicago and these folks seem like they are from this area. The resolution has a little hope in it. Not too much, but some. I really like it a lot....more
I am not sure exactly why I put True Detective by Max Allan Collins (The Road to Perdition) on my tbr list, but I know why i actually read it; GoodreaI am not sure exactly why I put True Detective by Max Allan Collins (The Road to Perdition) on my tbr list, but I know why i actually read it; ŷ friend Joe Kraus responded to me when I added it to my list:
“When you do get to this one, please think of me on the first page when the two heavies--Lang and Miller--come in to have their chat with Nate Heller. Miller is my mother's uncle, and reading this book was one of the key experiences that pushed me toward the research that led (after 30 years) to my own book.�
That book, by the way, is The Kosher Capones: A History of Chicago's Jewish Gangsters, which I have (re)-ordered from my library, having finished this book.
In Chicago 1932, Chicago Police Department detective Nathan Heller decides, after an ethically complex case, to drop out of the CPD and become a private detective. Not a smooth financial move, but hey, chalk up on for the good guys. I’ll call the book historical fiction, as it is situated in Depression/Prohibition/mob-strong Chicago, but Collins’s preface also reveals how he came to the move that distinguishes it from many other PI books: It’s a fictional detective, but one who works on Real World Cases. As in True Crime. So it's a blend of fiction and non-fiction, mixing real with fictional characters and events.
In his job Heller (somehow) gets audience with plenty of real world crime folks, including Elliot Ness, Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Mayor Anton Cermak, and even FDR! Even George Raft, who played many villains in theater and movies. The central case that Heller encounters has to do with something that actually happened in February 1933, the assassination of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, though the killer was initially intending to kill FDR. But along the way we get to the Chicago World Fair, to another assassination attempt on Fank Nitti, and. . . you know, he's a hard-boiled detective, so there's dames, lots of dames, natch. Oh, and Al Capone is actually his first client!
Get this in your head first: Heller is broke, he lives in a one-room apartment with a Murphy Bed in it (which is a running joke in the book) (you don't know what that is??! You have google, kids!) and he is very young. Given all that, I am not sure what is the most improbable aspect of the book. So Is it:
1) that he gives up a job with the Chicago Police Force because he doesn’t want to be associated with corruption; 2) that he, a nobody, has open and friendly access to gangster Frank Nitti, Al Capone (in prison!), Mayor Cermak and yes, even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; 3) that he with no cash and not a real impressive home (Murphy) “beds� several women; 4) that he saves his girlfriend from falling from a Chicago World’s Fair exhibit; 5) that he is a close friend of Elliot Ness?
One thing that stuck out for me--first in a good way, later in some annoyance--is that this is a very deeply researched book about Chicago in the early thirties. Collins, who lives in Muscatine, Iowa, admits he owes much of the Chicago feel of the book to his research partner, who lives in Chicago. At first I liked it, as I am a (admittedly transplant) Chicagoan, and then I thought it was a bit much, all the name- and place-dropping.
But I liked it well enough! True Detective (1983) (not the foundation of the 21st-century tv series) was awarded the Shamus Award for 1984 from the Private Eye Writers of America. There are more than 20 in the series, still running. Buddy Joe Kraus warned me to watch my back around his mother’s uncle, Miller, and I got that message. Jeesh, what a brute! ...more
This is a book especially for but not limited to high school English/poetry teachers:
I am so proud to be able to say I have several personal connectioThis is a book especially for but not limited to high school English/poetry teachers:
I am so proud to be able to say I have several personal connections with Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School, published by Penguin Random House (I know, quite a score for this kind of thing, which you wouldn’t think would attract a major publisher, even a teen imprint, but what a model for other schools and cities!!). I live in Oak Park and have worked with the legendary Pete Kahn’s Spoken Word Club off and on for a few years, and count him as a friend.
This is the group that is featured in the documentary Louder Than a Bomb (LTAB), a an exciting film you need to see especially if you teach middle and high school spoken word/poetry. LTAB began here in Chicago with the inspiration of PK and others at Young Chicago Authors, and they get huge crowds for poetry, yes, they do. The model has traveled to New York and NOLA and London, and so many other cities. Raucous events, not yr gramma’s church-like poetry readings (though audiences are encouraged to “respect the mic� and be quiet and honor the courage of the person performing, too). The foundation for LTAB itself may have happened in the Green Mill working class poetry slam events begun in the late eighties by the likes of Marc Smith and Patricia Smith (herself the queen of slam, a multiple national winner).
One reason you might like to read this book is because, as PK makes clear, the OPRFHS approach is the”page before stage� approach, which is to say it is about privileging the development and honing of the written word over performance, over spectacle, though the group reading performances are fun (I have gone to the showcases for years, and I am proud to say my own daughter L. just performed in one!). The point is that the writing is good, and this is not--most of it--teen poetry, but the continuing process of writing by OPRFHS SWC grads.
I am proud to name drop the names of many people I know, including editor Dan Sulliban, Will walden, Adam Levin, Langston Kerman (now a Comedy Central-level comedian), Iman Shumpert (NBA Basketball star, yes he was in the OPRF SW club! I don’t know him, actually, but I heard him perform in 2008), Nova Venerable (who was my neighbor!). Isaiah Makar, David Gilmer, and so many over the years.
Here’s the online book launch I attended (one hour) which you could sample:
This is a poem southside Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote when she was fifteen:
Clouds.
Oh, when I look into the sky / And see those quiet clouds, / This is a poem southside Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote when she was fifteen:
Clouds.
Oh, when I look into the sky / And see those quiet clouds, / Now all arrayed in fleecy white, / Now dressed in colored shrouds,
It seems I cannot draw my eye / From that rich, heaven-land / And drinking in the wise expanse, / I filled with rapture stand.
Unheedful of my transfixed state, / They float serenely by, / Those stately clouds / Calm sentries of the sky.
How can I fear to leave the earth / When heaven holds this glow! / Cloud-colored happiness and peace / Await me there, I know.
When she was asked how she saw the future, she said she hoped it would be as exquisite as those sunset clouds. She grew up rather poor (at times) in material things, even into her first marriage, and poetry did not pay the light bills. But she became the Poet Laureate of Illinois and the first African American woman winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
The text from Suzanna Slade is thoughtful and joyous, though not denying the struggles, and the bright watercolor illustrations by Cozbi A. Cabrera are exquisite.
Here's a couple iconic poems from her work:
We Real Cool The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We Left school. We
Lurk late. We Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We Die soon.
(from The Bean Eaters, 1960)
And because today is Valentine's Day:
To Be in Love To be in love Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things Through his eyes. A cardinal is red. A sky is blue. Suddenly you know he knows too. He is not there but You know you are tasting together The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch. Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes Because your pulse must not say What must not be said.
When he Shuts a door �
Is not there� Your arms are water.
And you are free With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold, Into the commonest ash....more
The most ambitious (and just plain largest) collection of Keillor Roberts' memoir or autobio comics, a Drawn & Quarterly production. This book collectThe most ambitious (and just plain largest) collection of Keillor Roberts' memoir or autobio comics, a Drawn & Quarterly production. This book collects from a decade of work, from five previous titles--Powdered Milk (2012), Miseryland (2015), Sunburning (2017), Chlorine Gardens (2018) and Rat Time (2019)--like a summary of her life so far. I categorize this as "disability" because Keillor has both MS and is bipolar, and these experiences have been part of earlier collections, but in this one we learn even more about the weirdness of her brain (or maybe, with the weirdness of my brain, I just forgot what I had read and all of this I had read before). Always funny, especially as we get deeper into the way her mind works. But it is not mostly about her disabilities; those are just part of her life. The main focus of the book is her family, and motherhood, as always.
Her daughter Xia always figures in here as the comic (funny, I mean) hero as in all the books, that Art Linklater, Kids Say the Darndest Things (I know this ages me as it was a popular book in the sixties or seventies) angle, but in this book many more people from her family and friends seem to figure in the joking around. And dogs, always dogs. Bigger book, more family members and friends, the classes she teaches. An expanded horizon. And it is funny, for sure.
The title is not so easily--or at all-explained; as I imagined, it was about that contemporary concept of "quiet quitting." And so I liked this title, hoping it would connect to that idea, or to slow growth, or just getting off the rat race maze, but here it is, Keiler more productive than ever, not really ever quitting, and I can't complain.
The key to the (apparently) acquired taste of this book for some ŷ readers is that Keillor is deadpan humor always, you have to get that. This is true for her art, too; sort of deliberately deadpan drawing, with no one smiling though jokes are being made all the time. I love all these people. I read it in a matter of hours, but I now actually own all of her books, yay....more
I just read (reread) Alex Nail's 2016 collection of diary comics about his teaching comics creation with kids here in Chicago, and this is most recentI just read (reread) Alex Nail's 2016 collection of diary comics about his teaching comics creation with kids here in Chicago, and this is most recent release (August 2021). Funny, touching, self-deprecating stories, but it's clear in the five year gap between his Teaching Comics: Volume One and this collection that he is getting better at both comics and teaching comics. He has the same (clownish) bit red nose, his hair is shorter, but he's the same guy, just more comfortable in his own skin. He doesn't romanticize the goofy kids and their short attention spans. He cares....more
2/27/24: Read stories from the book in a couple classes, YAL and a grad class where I and one c0-editor Roxanne Pilat zoomed in authors and long-time 2/27/24: Read stories from the book in a couple classes, YAL and a grad class where I and one c0-editor Roxanne Pilat zoomed in authors and long-time teachers Jessie Ann Foley and Tony Romano to talk about the purposes of and strategies to help students (or anyone) to write neighborhood stories from diverse perspectives.
8/28/23: Reading with my class focused on this topic. Students read and write growing up stories. Three other area teacher friends are also teaching the book and similar classes with me.
Growing Up Chicago! It’s been a privilege to co-edit this volume, along with Roxanne Pilat and Lauren DeJulio Bell. The book features the cover art of Emil Ferris, and a Foreword by Luis Alberto Urrea.
The collection includes stories and essays by contemporary Chicago area authors, including: Samira Ahmed, Dhana-Marie Branton, Anne Calcagno, Ana Castillo, Maxine Chernoff, M Shelly Conner, Stuart Dybek, Saja Elshareif, Emil Ferris, Jessie Ann Foley Jessie Foley, Charles Johnson, Rebecca Makkai, Daiva Markelis, James Jim McManus McManus, David Mura, Nnedi Okorafor, Christian Picciolini, Tony Romano, Erika Sánchez, and George Saunders.
We are grateful to our past and present student research assistants, and especially appreciative of the efforts of the publishing team at Northwestern University Press, for the magic that helped turned this collection into a book!...more
Vivian Maier was a reclusive Evanston/Chicago nanny (for four decades?!) and even more reclusively a street photographer who was unknown until after hVivian Maier was a reclusive Evanston/Chicago nanny (for four decades?!) and even more reclusively a street photographer who was unknown until after her death when John Maloof, a Chicago historian and collector, picked up boxes of her photographs auctioned off after her death. More than 100,000 photographs! Quite a stash, in cardboard boxes! She was born in NYC and grew up in France before moving to Chicago. This is my fifth book of her work I have read, and have seen a few exhibitions here in Chicago. This is one of the very best of the books, organized in terms of different categories such as France, the beach, downtown, but the theme of her coming out of the shadows as a photographer and her photography emphasizing shadows and light are central here.
If you are looking for one book about this once unknown, now discovered artist who photographed people with such grace and humanity, who spoke for the poor, who loved Chicago faces, if you want to know her story, this might be the book for you.
YouTube intro, by the curators who also write fine and helpful essays:
PS: I have two sons taking photography classes and have been traveling again a bit so have been taking more photographs, just for fun. The cover shot of the book is seen as a self-portrait, though in shadow, as she often did it, and this has inspired me to do shadow self-portraits of myself in the morning and evening, in various places, more than a hundred shadow self-portraits so far (working my way to 100,000, of course) (not). Not making any claims about quality here, just having fun, but it's interesting to me to play around with. And it makes me pay attention to beauty....more
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