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| Marc Kelly Smith |
Shutting up is an art form that I struggle to master. A challenge for many of us older guys, from whom nobody wants to hear anything. We've had our say.
Several times during the only Bears games I watched this season, the last two, the camera focused in on the "GSH" on the left arms of players' jerseys, and I had to stifle the impulse to explain to my wife, "George Stanley Halas, founder of the Bears."
Which would have inevitably led to my sharing one of my favorite bits of sports trivia: In the 1920s, when Halas took over the team and moved it from Decatur to Chicago, the practice was to name a city's pro football team after its existing baseball team. Which is how you got New York Giants in both sports. But Halas, noting that players are bigger in football than in baseball, said they're too tough to be Cubs; they're Bears. The name stuck.
Or so the story goes.
I didn't say any of that. She enjoyed the game and said we might consider watching this football next year, an outcome not unrelated to my efforts to maintain a manly silence.
Halas died in in 1983. Most key formative figures in Chicago sports — William Wrigley, Charles Comiskey, Bill Wirtz — are long gone.
But one Chicago sports pioneer still walks among us. Marc Kelly Smith founded the Uptown Poetry Slam, first at the Get Me High Lounge, then 40 years ago this July, at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge. And if you're thinking, "Poetry is not sports," then you haven't been to the Green Mill and witnessed the slam on the third Sunday of every month.
As someone who has watched Michael Jordan dunk a basketball, shared an outfield with Minnie Minoso at a charity softball game and watched a Cubs game from inside the scoreboard at Wrigley Field, I can assure you that the poetry slam is as peak a Chicago competitive experience as they come. Poetry is like rugby — not that popular, but plenty tough.
Smith is appearing in a one-man show this weekend at Chicago's 50-seat Kimball Arts Center, and I phoned to ask him why, at 76, he is still talking. Why bother?
"That's a good question," Smith said. "When the COVID pandemic hit, I thought, 'Well, OK, the run at the Green Mill, 35 years, that's a pretty good run.' Time to back off the career."
He'd bought a house in Savanna, Illinois, "a river rat town on the Mississippi," 2½ hours west of Chicago, as a fixer-upper project.
"I've always been a city guy," Smith said. "But I drove through the area. It was just so cheap. I came back one day and got a house to restore."
With events drying up post-COVID, he gave up his Chicago apartment and moved there full time. The plan was to write a novel, watch the river flow and the years pass. But he succumbed to that trap snaring so many aging writers: complaining about their shrinking worlds.
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It seems that most every one of your pieces resonates with me for one or another reason. As an old guy, I think about what to do with the remaining years, thoughts colored at least in part by legacy. And like Mr. Smith, I love the Driftless Region and will be heading out towards Savanna next week. Thanks so much for your work.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 90s there was a poetry slam competition at the Metro, with teams from Boston, NYC, San Francisco and Chicago. The poets from the other three cities were very serious and sincere and their recitations were lovely. Just what you'd expect from English majors. The Chicago slam team was dressed in matching bowling shirts. Their poems were loud, bawdy and in-your-face. Very good, and pure performance. Like Neil's sports analogy, they bounced all over the stage and high-fived each other. The Metro crowd was on its feet hooting and hollering. The audience voted and of course Chicago won, as they should have. What a night.
ReplyDeleteRetirement can be a conundrum. If you can no longer do what you love, you can at least make yourself useful. For example, if it's windy on garbage pickup day, you can chase your neighbors garbage cans down the street. (It happens more often than you might think)
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how snobbery works. I haven't written a poem -- that I'd care to show you -- in my life, but I'm affronted by the poetry slam concept: that's not poetry; it's just showing off, I say. To myself. Rapping is poetry, I suppose. It often rhymes and is frequently in iambic pentameter. But in comparison to what Poe, Dante, Frost and Sandburg produced, it seems kind of second rate, while hopping around on a stage emoting stream-of-conscious nonsense is third or fourth rate, if indeed we consider it poetry at all. But this is all conjecture, mind you. Even though I lived in Uptown for ten years or so, I didn't hang out at the Green Mill and thus missed the heyday of the Poetry Slam. Who knows. Maybe I would have liked it.
ReplyDeletetate
It's performance, Tate. Points for recognizing that, not having seen it, you can't really know. You mention Frost — remember that he was responsible for one of the great botched poetry readings of all time, at JFK's inauguration (which, he salvaged at the last moment, after the whole thing was veering on disaster). Don't think Dante, think Homer. A bard with a lute, singing in a corner. When you see someone who is really, really good at this — like Patricia Smith — she burns up the stage. Her poems do anyway, just read. But seeing them delivered is something else.
ReplyDeleteSavanna is an interesting choice for retirement. This gent is 100% correct. It's a tad bit down at the heels. Prone to flooding from the river, that much is true. Houses are cheap. Commercial buildings as well. You folks may recall a man named Frank Fritz from several years back. The old "Bearded Charmer" on the cable show American Pickers. His little antique store Frank Fritz Finds was in Savanna. And Savanna is also home to a somewhat notorious biker restaurant/bar called Poopy's that is now for sale. There you go.
ReplyDelete"But I drove through the area. It was just so cheap. I came back one day and got a house to restore."
ReplyDeleteCheap? Being a native of that area, it was not that long ago that we purchased a nice home for about $20,000.
Nowadays, prices are double that.
Never knew of this. Another wonderful peak into the heart of Chicago. Thank you young Neil.
ReplyDeleteMy poker buddy RVT was part of the inception of the Green Mill slam.
ReplyDeleteI went out to see him I don't open mic last Thursday at the getaway loads of fun I'm going to give him a call and see if he wants to go Saturday night
Went to just one Poetry Slam at the Green Mill. One of the earliest ones, probably in 1990 or 1991. I remember a slide show and a poem called "The Death of Old Comiskey."
ReplyDeleteLike the ballpark that would soon be brought down, the performance brought down the house. People were laughing, crying, cheering, yelling. Pretty sure the name of the guy who did it was Bob Chicoine. It was later released as a video. May have even been shown on Ch. 11, a year or two later.
Need to take a road trip through NW Illinois...to Galena and Dubuque. Haven't been up there in over 40 years. My wife is from Cleveland, and she has never been to either one. She would love both of them. Galena was used as a location in "Field of Dreams"--and I believe Dubuque may have been, too. Is their historic inclined railway...they call it an elevator...still running? Decades ago, it cost a nickel to ride on it.
I had no idea Bob was a poet. I'll have to ask him about this.
ReplyDeleteA heads-up, Mister S: All "Reply" links to individual comments are down.
ReplyDelete