CHICAGO — Some days the hardest thing in the world is explaining Chicago to someone not from Chicago. Other days, particularly when you already live here, the hardest thing is seeing the city clearly, as vast and varied, as larger than your block, your neighborhood or your ward. Hence, the violent reputation, the provincialism, the old mash of cliches: “I’ll have a Deep-Dish Windy Capone with a Sweet Home chaser,” as journalist (and South Shore native) Carlo Rotella jokes in the introduction to an invaluable new collection, “Wherever I’m At — An Anthology of Chicago Poetry.” A collaboration of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, the venerable South Side staple Third World Press and the Elmwood Park-based After Hours Press, it’s a portrait of the city as seen by contemporary poets and artists.
Assembled with just two rules: Each poem must be from a living poet, and about Chicago. (Not merely written by someone from Chicago, or written while in Chicago.)
The result — edited by Hall of Fame founder Donald Evans, with illustrations by Kerry James Marshall, Amanda Williams, Tonika Lewis Johnson and 24 other Chicago artists — is an unusually engaging snapshot of a place too often understood with lazy shortcuts. Or rather, it’s 134 snapshots, by 134 poets, from unknowns to world-famous vanguards.
The poems cover Montrose Beach and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Bucket Boys and Smartbar. Police shootings and monarch butterflies. Gwendolyn Brooks and Carl Sandburg. Devon Avenue and Ashland Avenue and Division Street. Grandmothers in Lawndale and the Disney store on Michigan Avenue. Chicago’s past and uncertain future.
It’s so expansive, smart and (absences aside) comprehensive, you wonder how many hoops were jumped through to finish it. No shocker perhaps: Roughly a decade of hoops.
Hoop No. 1: Death
“Wherever I’m At” began, in earnest, with a deathbed wish. Robin Metz, a longtime professor at Knox College in Galesburg, who also cofounded that school’s creative writing program, died in 2018 of pancreatic cancer. Evans recalls: “I went to his home in Door County (Wisconsin) and he said not doing this book was one of his big regrets and asked if I would take over. Foolishly, I said I would do it, and two months later he died.”
They had met a decade earlier at Open Books (then in River North). Metz was blue-collar, from Pittsburgh. “The kind of guy who was always scheming, in a good way,” Evans said. Metz came to Open Books to read a poem, Evans was there to read a story; it was an event for a local literary journal, but not one spectator showed up. So they left and got drinks. Metz told Evans one of the biggest deficits in the poetry world was the lack of a definitive, contemporary anthology of Chicago poetry. New York had one. Los Angeles, too. But there was nothing for Chicago — the birthplace of slam poetry, home of the Poetry Foundation. Metz put an ad in Poets & Writers magazine, asking for submissions.
But he never made the time to get very far, so large caches of submissions by Chicago poets languished for years. Collaborators dropped out. When Evans picked up the project, he received several bins of submissions and a mountain of electronic files, but since much of the work was dated, he saved a little of it, and basically, he started again.
Hoop No. 2: Whittling
Evans honored the spirit of Metz’s intentions but changed the rules. Metz imagined a book of poems by Chicago poets. Evans pictured the book as a kind of story of the city itself, which could lead to poets referencing poets (and literary history), refrains, echoes. “And only one poem per poet, which made room for a Chicago more representative of the city, which is different things to different people.” Also some of the poems Metz had collected — Evans didn’t like them. So he drew up a list of essential local poets, then began calling friends and mainstays, Angela Jackson (Illinois poet laureate), Stuart Dybek. Each writer he approached gave him a list of other writers he had to include.
As for the suburbs: “I did not disqualify them. I grew up here, lived here my whole life. I think of Evanston, Cicero, Oak Park, places like that, as Chicago. But Springfield, no?”
Hoop No. 3: Begging
Aside from an impressive roster of artists who lent works — Marshall, Williams, Johnson, Tony Fitzpatrick, Xavier Nuez — he landed Aleksandar Hemon, Sandra Cisneros, Dybek, Jackson, avery r. young, Li-Young Lee, Edward Hirsch, Patricia Smith, Luis Alberto Urrea, Kathleen Rooney, and many more. He contacted publishers, agents, friends of friends of friends. “It became detective work,” Evans said. “I didn’t want people to think this would be nothing much.”
But for a variety of reasons — deadlines, copyright, general unresponsiveness — gaps formed. He couldn’t get work from some of Chicago’s most significant contemporary poets. Nate Marshall. Eve Ewing. Natasha Trethewey. Roger Reeves. Kevin Coval, who cofounded Louder than a Bomb, then grew mired in allegations he mishandled sexual assault allegations at the Chicago writing program Young Chicago Authors, where he was artistic director, fell out of touch with the project.
“What surprised me was how several young poets didn’t respond once,” Evans said. “If I was 24 and someone wanted me for an anthology, to sit alongside many greats, I would be like, ‘I’m in the car now, where do I need to go?’ Maybe it’s because I used email?”
Hoop No. 4: Redundancy
The right mix of subjects is key for an anthology like this. Too many references to deep dish and Navy Pier, you’ve got a guidebook, a tourist’s Chicago. Evans received poems on Humboldt Park, the 55th Street underpass, Chicago winters, neighborhood pubs, Milwaukee Avenue. He also got so many poems on the blues, he started asking for other genres. Gwendolyn Brooks came up a lot. He got so many CTA nods, he decided the next one had to be unique.
“At a certain point, you stop accepting poems about Lake Michigan, OK? I started to look for, at least, poems that were told from a boat on Lake Michigan. Because a lot of the ones we had were about the writer standing on the shoreline. Which makes sense. That’s who poets are. We don’t get invited onto boats.”
Hoop No. 5: Publishing
Metz had a verbal agreement with a publisher in India. Evans wanted something closer, and to finish sooner. University presses were already planning several years ahead. That wouldn’t work — he wanted mostly fresh, current poems, not five-year-old poems. Also, the book cost $25,000 to produce, with pieces added right up until the deadline. So Evans partnered with two local publishers, Third World and After Hours. As for the poets: They got $25 and a copy of the book. “Which is $25 more than a lot of poets get for poems.”
