Chicago and Poets

Recently on our local Public Radio Station they brought together writers to talk about whether Chicago is a good location to be located and talked about the community. I think for poets (who are infinitely superior to mere writers) Chicago has great potential but this potential is not tapped because of the lack of institutions. If you look at the institutions we have many of them are not serious about creating community the Poetry Center for example is great at bringing in some readers but most of them are at best bland (Billy Corgan?). The Hands on Stanzas poets in the schools project of which I am a member is a great program but there ought to be projects like this reaching out to other groups, working class ethnics
african americans, business people. The problem with Chicago is that there is no critical mass and the pubs we do have such as ACM and Poetry, Chicago Review are not really Chicago pubs in the way that Tin House, Fence is a New York Pub or Chain is a Philly pub. In the end it will be up to the poets in this community to create something new. The fact is that the state of poetry being created by younger poets in the USA is moribund at best apart from a few stars such as Peter Gizzi and Lisa Jarnot GenX has not produced a Robert Creeley or even Charles Bernstein, and we are still calling people ' language poets' 30 years after the demise of Language. This is what needs to be acted upon our great Inland Sea of poets in Chicago. Creating something new, making it new