In last week’s issue I wrote about poet Charles Bernstein, who gave a reading on the University of Chicago’s campus on February 14.  Here is the interview that I did with Bernstein the previous day. Read the rest of this entry »

A former Chicago Weekly writer and Features Editor like Katie Buitrago! All of us at the Weekly want to congratulate Katie on her excellent feature in the most recent Chicago Reader, “What sort of woman reads Playboy?” It’s about Peggy Wilkins, a forty-something Hyde Park resident and University of Chicago Library server technician, who has worked her way to the top of Playboy Magazine fandom. She’s even had to rent an second apartment above the one she shares with her boyfriend to store her exhaustive collection of magazines and posters. So what drives Wilkins’s passion? Read the article to find out!

In this week’s issue, we had a piece on poet Rae Armantrout, who was in the area for a reading and talk last week. Here is the rest of the interview with Armantrout, as conducted by Weekly writer Daniel Benjamin over email; follow-up questions, conducted in person and lightly edited, are preceded by an asterisk.

You have written about this before, in interviews and in your memoir True, but I’m wondering if you could say something about how your upbringing, education, and poetic influences have figured into your poetry?

I was alone a lot when I was growing up. I was an only child and there was alcoholism in my family so I often wanted to stay out of the way. I think that has affected my work in a couple of ways. First, I tended to entertain myself by reading and writing. And then, of course, I was a lonely child. I think that original loneliness shows up in my poems. I often seem to be looking at things from a distance. I don’t know how confessional I want to get here. As I’ve said before, my mother was a fundamentalist. That means I was exposed to the Bible. When I was looking for reading material, it was always there in all its strangeness. On the other hand, my exposure to dogma made me ornery. Read the rest of this entry »

Our indicted former governor Rod Blagojevich will be speaking and signing his new memoir, “The Governor,” at the University of Chicago Bookstore (Barnes & Noble) this week.

The signing will take place Tuesday, December 8, at 2pm.

From the Times’s review:

His publicist has described the book, published by Phoenix Books, as a “six-figure deal.” But in his writing, Mr. Blagojevich seems to have a specific message for the public, and perhaps more precisely, for those who might sit on his jury in a federal trial next year: He did nothing corrupt, though others have. He then lays out what he portrays as Chicago’s gritty, crass political rules, established long before him, in which power is traded for favors.

…

Ms. Aimen suggested that Mr. Blagojevich might struggle to keep his own legal team because of his desire to talk openly about the charges. “I think he must be a hard guy to handle,” she said.

For those who don’t remember his term, this quote from a press conference about sums it up: “It’s like the little boy with a pile of horse manure, I kept digging cheerfully in that and found a pony in there — the pony is free public transportation for all seniors in the state of Illinois.”

From the People's Atlas of Chicago project; AREA Chicago

A panel discussion on arts and activism in the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit will be held simultaneously from all three cities, linked via the internet this Thursday. In Chicago, Little Black Pearl in Kenwood is hosting the event. The event is part of the “Arts and Activism in the Midwest” series, which is part of the Chicago Calling Arts Festival, which is itself part of Chicago Artists Month. In Chicago, the panel is Lindsay Obermeyer, Carol Ng-He, Jennifer Karmin, Dan Godston, and at least one other artist. That may seem like a big panel already, but keep in mind St. Louis and Detroit also have four to five panelists each. It should be interesting to see how a 15-panelist, three-location discussion can take place without collapsing into chaos, let alone be productive. Still, they must know what they’re doing.

October 1, 7-9pm
Little Black Pearl
1060 East 47th Street