Michael sat at the head of the table with the faintest hint of laughter curling the sides of his mouth. He had recently taken half the reins as co-editor of the poetry section of the Chicago Review.
At 18, the youngest in the group, I was making this pitch for a poem featuring a woman on a boat in a brown tissue-paper suit.
“What is it you like about this poem?” The tone from Pat, Michael’s co-editor, was hardly matter-of-fact.
I had no coherent response.
“I can see the brown tissue paper,” she said. “What about the rest?”
Michael’s expression surrendered to impish.
The summer of 1982, almost everyone else on the poetry staff had left the University of Chicago campus. That left Michael, Pat and myself to shuffle through the manuscripts that fell literally over the transom in a basement space in Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece Robie House. We shared the cluttered room with an atomic energy research group. The hands of a clock on the wall were stuck minutes away from nuclear Armageddon.
On a bright summer night, Michael walked me the several blocks from Robie House to my sublet on Blackstone Avenue. I invited him in and offered him a plate of Vanilla wafers with a glass of milk.
“You’re an important member of the staff,” he said. “You have a good sense of language.”
I wanted to fall on my knees and perform some kind of Greek-style reverential rite with an incense burner. I refrained.
By chance I caught Michael on flute with his Irish band in the Daley Plaza downtown, a venue the city dubbed “Dancing under the Picasso.” Live bands played at noon, from classic Swing to all kinds of world music, a phrase not yet in popular use.
We office workers abandoned paper-bag lunches and kicked up our heels. As a summer secretary at the legal firm Sidley & Austin, I never missed “Dancing under the Picasso.”
I tapped my feet wildly to every song from the Irish bands, responding with equal enthusiasm to each group, including the guys that offered up something akin to a cover of the 80s hit “Come on Aileen.”
Michael waltzed over to chat. “We don’t actually consider this Irish music,” he said, the impish expression in full bloom.
“You don’t?” I pondered the contrast.
Rhythm, language, taste, refinement, origins, authenticity—poetry. I had a lot to learn. Good thing Michael co-piloted the Chicago Review poetry section that year. 42 years later, I’m still grateful.
Wordshop Revisited 