Robert Klein Engler
Robert Klein Engler lives in Chicago, and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School. His book, ''A Winter of Words,'' about turmoil at Daley College, is available from amazon.com.
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Chicago Poets Upset Because Police Shut Down Party
Many in the Chicago poetry community are upset about a July 20 police raid that forced hundreds of poetry lovers into the street and shut down the free Printer's Ball hosted by Poetry Magazine and others.
According to the poetryorganization.org web page, "The Printers' Ball is an annual celebration of print literature in Chicago, hosted by Poetry, in collaboration with more than 80 local literary organizations."
Fran Spellman, writing in the Chicago Sun Times (July 25, 2007) says, "The party Friday night ended up being shut down by the police...in a dispute over whether the Bridgeport gallery hosting it had been inspected, had the proper city licenses and could safely accommodate a large gathering."
Oskar Friedl, director of the gallery, claims that at least 30 police officers came to his gallery "in full-fledged combat gear" shortly after 10:30 p.m. "It felt like the Gestapo," Friedl said. "I'm not even blaming the city for what they're doing, but the way they did it was very upsetting."
Friedl adds, "If you want to be known as a sophisticated city, you have to work on a sophisticated level. And it's not just a few sculptures in Millennium Park that make a city sophisticated."
Rosa Escareno, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Business Affairs and Licensing, insisted that the city was responding to an anonymous complaint about events being held every third Friday with large crowds lined up outside.
Police and city inspectors found hundreds of people on second and third floors, which Escareno said are "not licensed for any type of activity...Candles were lit throughout the building near 'very flammable,' oil-based paintings," Escareno added.
Writing in chicagopoetry.com, C. J. Laity claims, "This is yet another example of the Chicago Police acting as if they are above the law by terrorizing the kind and decent people of this city with their don't ask any questions or we'll kick the shit out of you attitude."
C. J. Laity continues: "This is America, not Afghanistan; and your taxes shouldn't fund the Taliban tactics that succeed in censoring the culture in this city. I wish I had my camera so that I could show you just how knuckle-headed these armed thugs looked barking threats at the peaceful publishers of Chicago literature."
According to Chuck Sudo, associate editor at Chicagoist.com and resident of Bridgeport, "The real reason given for the raid, as told to us by editors from MAKE and Another Chicago Magazine who were also at the Ball, was that there were 'multiple liquor license violations.'"
Sudo adds, "The combination is probably what led to the cops shutting it down. Everyone we talked to expressed surprise that the cops came so quickly, as though someone had tipped them to the happenings."
One contributor to the Chicagoist blog describes the event this way: "In all it was a typical writers' gathering: half-remodeled building, interesting performances, hard-drinking introverts, and no one really appearing to be in charge of the whole thing whatsoever."
Another blogger claims: "I want everyone to know the Printers Ball kinda sucked. There was really not enough diversity in local talent to suit me and yes, there was (as usual) the typical Northside type of overpricing for everything going on."
Thankfully, there were no reports of poets pretending to be sophisticated by smoking and eating tidbits made with pate de foie gras.
This event in Chicago could be just a poetry tempest in a teapot, or it could be a crack in the foundation that supports the liberal weltanschung in "sophisticated" Chicago.
Most of the poets and artists that were at the Printer's Ball are politically liberal and progressive. They support gay marriage, divorce, abortion on demand, affirmative action, Chicago as a sanctuary city, and the Democratic Party. Some hate President Bush and want us out of Iraq immediately. They write about it in their poetry.
Or, as one person who was there describe those in attendance: "I mingled with out-of touch bookish, mildew-shouldered foul-smelling types who rarely see the sunlight and upper-class wine-inhaling snooty types WHO I SAW giving their bored, underage teens alcohol in public at a party, and then someone yells 'rat' as the cops crawled in on their knuckles..."
Be that as it may, many at this event seem to have trouble connecting the political dots. Let's help them: Poets hold bash in Bridgeport, once home to Mayor Daley the Elder. This in turn leads to Mayor Daley the Younger who runs Chicago, now, and has the support of many liberal artists and poets. Mayor Daley the Younger also runs the police department, who in turn breaks up the Printer's Ball with tactics that supposedly "...felt like the Gestapo."
These are the same ordinary Democrats who probably support Senator Barack Hussein Obama for President. Just like, as the Chicago Tribune reports, the ordinary "wealthy and the powerful, including a Chicago-based hedge fund manager who earned $1.4 billion last year." Will we be surprised at the convention when the party turns to Senator Hillary Clinton? Is there a connection here between liberalism and the present nanny state and the coming police state? You connect the dots.
Many asked to leave the Printer's Ball by the police are writers who ought to understand the importance of symbolism. Do you think it dawns on them now that there is at the core of contemporary liberalism a strain of local intolerance that is no different from the beliefs that motivate Communist Chinese politicians?
"Stop it," liberal critics say! "You're just reading too much into the text." But others answer while scratching their heads, "Don't the Chicago police know that contemporary poetry is the propaganda arm of the liberal state?"
It is also troubling that many of Chicago's schizophrenic liberals worry and protest more about hunger in Darfur, which is thousands of miles away, than why it costs so much to ride the broken-down CTA, which is right outside their door. Now, with the Bridgeport Poetry Bust, at least they have something local to question.
Poets should know that Chicago has more important things to worry about than poetry, anyway. Haven't you heard, "The Olympics are coming! The Olympics are coming!" Poets, like everyone else here need to be kicked in the butt once in a while, to stay in line with that sophisticated agenda.
In the 1960s there was much discussion about the arts as a consciousness-raising activity. Last century, Robert Lowell would read his poetry at antiwar protests that supported Eugene McCarthy. Those readings were followed by the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Perhaps the police breaking up a poetry party in Bridgeport will help some young poets to have their consciousness raised. Then, they will begin to question the liberal agenda that claims to free people while at the same time controlling them more and more by the nanny state.
After the Printer's Ball bust, some readers may conclude that poetry in Chicago with its political bluster is simply irrelevant. The best poets in Chicago often avoid these meetings, even if Anne Halsey, spokeswoman for the Poetry Foundation, maintains the police were "extremely pleasant and courteous."
Anne's comments are reassuring. Yet, when placed against Georges Bidault's observation they may seem a bit patronizing. Bidault writes, "Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o'clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo."
