Reviewed by:

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

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...

审阅者：

• 无论我在哪里：芝加哥诗歌选集编辑。作者：唐纳德·G·埃文斯和罗宾·梅茨
• 马克·菲什拜因（简介）

我是一位诗人，也是一位城市男孩，我一生的大部分时间都在曼哈顿度过，在巴黎度过了几年，在华盛顿特区度过了十年。所以我想我是一个城市势利小人。我的儿子大学毕业后来到了芝加哥，并在那里养育了他的家人，所以在过去的二十年里我经常去拜访。芝加哥对我来说是什么？“也许是一个居住的好地方，”我经常说，“但我不想去参观。” 尤其是在冬天，连企鹅都会避开它。这是那首著名歌曲中男人与妻子跳舞的地方。深盘披萨送你去急诊室。如果您热衷于摩天大楼建筑（大写 A！），那就太棒了。艾略特·内斯和阿尔·卡彭。保罗·巴特菲尔德布鲁斯乐队告诉我儿子，你最好拿把枪。

上周，在撰写本文时，我永久搬到了这里。家庭优先。被邀请评论一本由 134 位诗人组成的诗集，其中收录了一首以芝加哥为主题的诗，这是多么偶然的事啊？如何更好地发现一座城市的灵魂？在这里，诗人被要求做惠特曼为纽约、波德莱尔和阿波利奈尔为巴黎、济慈为罗马、桑德堡为芝加哥所做的事情（遗憾的是，他的名字没有出现在序言或引言中，只出现在 134 首诗中的两首） ）。[完第127页]

这个收藏品的规模之大令人震惊。什么是芝加哥诗歌？卡洛·罗特拉 (Carlo Rotella) 在前言中指出：

我认为格温多林·布鲁克斯在这里作为芝加哥诗歌传统的主导人物出现。

她无疑是一位伟大的诗人，与詹姆斯·鲍德温、兰斯顿·休斯和其他许多人一起，普遍重新定义了二十世纪的黑人经历。她轻松的风格和对方言的运用与优雅的结合影响了所有诗歌，不仅仅是根据人口普查，29% 的芝加哥人口是“黑人或非裔美国人”。但我在这里没有可以解读的芝加哥诗歌“流派”，只有当今诗歌选集中熟悉的万花筒风格。

由于这本书发布的主题是“芝加哥”，所以所有诗歌都提到了有关这座城市的一些东西：一条街道、一个社区、当地商店、俱乐部、餐馆或公园，但地点通常是次要的，而不是诗中的叙述，经 Rotella 先生同意：

一些给这里的作家带来灵感的主题可能与您在代顿、纽约或上海看到的主题类似，但其中一些是芝加哥独有的。

事实上，这本诗集中的每首诗都经过精心打磨、精心制作、“专业”，值得出版。其中有很多都是杰出且令人难忘的。但我更喜欢一本更短、更集中的诗集，与《世界的猪屠夫》有更多的联系。我为 134 首诗中的 35 首添加了书签，这些诗感觉与芝加哥的生活体验完全相关：城市景观和密歇根湖、火车和公共交通、极端天气、种族、爵士乐和蓝调以及芝加哥的丰富意象。有着神圣誓言和绝望的社区。奇怪的是，没有人提到芝加哥也是美国诗歌中心之一，是诗歌基金会、诗歌杂志和著名大学出版社的所在地。

在进一步介绍之前，该系列还提供了二十七个插图、照片和图形，其中许多都引人入胜。他们位置优越且富有洞察力。尽管尝试过于雄心勃勃，但本书的编辑和排版还是非常用心的。[完第128页]

介绍从“芝加哥是什么样的？”这个问题开始。并以这个想法结束：

芝加哥是一个什么样的城市？事情就是这样的。和这个。和这个。和这个。和另一个。

密歇根大道与纽约第五大道不一样。市中心呈现出...