Experimental Poetics in Contemporary Chicago: Poetry and Theory

Experimental Poetics in Contemporary Chicago: Poetry and Theory

Organizer: William Allegrezza, Lecturer in English,
Indiana University Northwest
wallegre@iun.edu

Panelist 1

Is There a There There? The Idea of Chicago Experimental Poetry as a Distinctive Practice
Robert Archambeau, Associate Professor of English, Lake Forest College

Paul Hoover has recently maintained that there is something distinctive to Chicago’s experimental poetry scene. He claims that the city’s experimental poets combine elements of various alternative poetries in a manner not generally found elsewhere. In this paper I examine Hoover’s claim in light of two different contexts: the history of Chicago’s literary self-image, and the current growth of experimental poetry institutions in the city.

The first half of the paper will argue that Hoover’s claim is simply the latest iteration of a Chicago tradition almost as old as the city itself: defiantly claiming cultural exceptionalism. By placing Hoover’s rhetoric in the context of claims for the city’s distinctiveness made during the first and second “Chicago Renaissances,” (1910-1920 and 1940- 1950, respectively) I will argue that the rhetoric of distinctness has remained remarkably constant over time.

The second half of the paper will examine Hoover’s claims for a Chicago style of experimental poetry in the context of recent developments in Chicago experimental poetry (reading series, online forums, small magazines, etc.). Hoover’s claims for distinctiveness, in this context, seems both too narrow — in that the actual production of literature covers a range beyond that articulated in his essay — and too grandiose, in that the work of local experimental poets is less locally distinctive than he would have it.

Panelist 2

A New Prairie School?
Timothy Yu, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

Has the flourishing of experimental poetry in Chicago in recent years produced a distinctive “school” of Chicago poetic practice, one that echoes the horizontal lines and open spaces of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie architecture? I pursue this question by examining the rise of physical and virtual institutions supporting avant-garde poetry in Chicago and then reading that poetry’s print manifestations.

Experimental poetry’s profile on the Chicago scene has been most visibly raised by new reading series, from the well-established Danny’s series to Chuck Stebelton’s adventurous programs at the Myopic Book Store in Wicker Park. Ray Bianchi’s Chicago Postmodern Poetry website features listings, interviews, and reviews focusing on experimental Chicago writing. The site provides an entry into debates about whether “postmodern” poetry operates under a continuing stigma on the Chicago scene, still seen as dominated by performance poetry or by Poetry magazine. The established website chicagopoetry.com, for instance, hosts periodic attacks on the “postmodernism” associated with Paul Hoover and Columbia College.

The poetry of Chuck Stebelton, in its density, seriousness, openness, and sense of place, may best embody Chicago avant-garde writing. Stebelton’s deadpan, enjambed, sharply etched sentences give his poems urbanity and political edge. Yet some of his most powerful pieces, particularly those in his chapbook Precious, also effectively evoke the Midwestern landscape, not through nostalgia but through suggestion and abstraction. Stebelton’s “new” prairie may be a linguistically dense, highly built environment, but it retains an awareness of the wider and perhaps more open spaces that structure it.

Panelist 3

Stink, Anarchy, and Nowhere Men: Narrative Impulse in Contemporary Chicago Poetry
Garin Cycholl, Lecturer, University of Illinois, Chicago

As a city, Chicago presents a unique series of lines and borders. Crossing these lines puts contemporary poets in contact not only with the city’s politics, geology, and architecture; it also forces the poem to reconcile unwritten histories of weeds, race, and cement. The poem’s exploration of the narratives proposed here prompt an artistic moment where, in the words of John Edgar Wideman, “Time was, and time wasn’t.” Giving special attention to the (post)modern dimensions of space in city and poem, this paper will examine points of innovation to which contemporary Chicago poets have adapted in their explorations of this city, its cliché and displacements.

Panelist 4

The Economics of the Avant Garde in Chicago
Raymond Bianchi, Editor, ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com

In the United States innovative or avant garde poetry has always been a creature of New York or San Francisco. The Middle of the US has been solidly well, middle until recently. The reality is however that as the economics of New York and San Francisco become untenable for many poets they have begun to migrate to other places among these are Cincinnati, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta and especially of late Chicago. What makes Chicago's experiment in avant garde poetry unique and what needs to be examined is how much of the avant garde activity is outside the academy self funded a grass roots endeavor. The institutions that have arisen to support this new community, one that dwells in the midst of the largest communities of Slam and Traditional Neo Confessional poets in the US is impressive and comes back to the economics of the region and the fact that for many of these endeavors the cost of entry is low and this provides a fertile ground for a concentration of avant garde poets.