Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) thinks the little free libraries along many Chicago sidewalks are bad—very bad. They are “unregulated”! And they’re “popular”! And many of them are planted in city soil! (Collective […]
Near the end of Saturday at this year’s Printers Row Lit Fest, an 80-year-old Italian painter from the North Shore told me she’s going to have a huge party if […]
When the world is literally on fire, who can think about writing? The present writer was reminded of Chicago author Rebecca Makkai’s 2018 Electric Literature essay on the topic (“The […]
June Sawyers wrote this poem—as a way to record her experience—on a walk over to Soldier Field this weekend during the Taylor Swift The Eras Tour. Taylor knowsyour secretsyour vulnerabilitiesyour […]
Nobody knows anything about Homer except what’s in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and, even there, it gets dicey, as James I. Porter details in his challenging and provocative Homer: […]
Puddin’ is a slim volume, small enough to tuck in a back pocket or a small purse. That size may suggest a good way to read this “memoir in prose poems” […]
In her new book of poetry Woman without Shame, Sandra Cisneros looks aging in the face and laughs. She laughs at the frenetic lusts and couplings of youth—at broken hearts and […]
Reviewed by Michael Leach Patrick Reardon’s epic poem The Lost Tribes is a cri du coeur as thrilling for our time as Alan Ginsberg’s Howl was for his. It celebrates […]
Jerry and Estelle Cimino are on the road, spreading the Beat Gospel to the world. As founders of the Beat Museum in San Francisco, they’ve made a mission of keeping […]
The title of Where Are the Snows, Kathleen Rooney’s new, award-winning collection of poetry, serves as both question and commentary to start off the book. Where are the snows, anyway? […]
Carla Sawyer is a tall, smart-alecky 21-year-old who’s working for a landscaping company until she figures out what to do with her life. She’s on a job in one of […]
The pain that S. Yarberry suffers as a transgender person is strikingly described in their new book of jagged, anguished poetry A Boy in the City. It is pain set […]