poemeleon

Here, in the "Flyover Zone" of the Midwest, the issue of regionalism comes up enough to make a difference--whether in calls for submissions--or subtle competition in the arts as promoted by adjacent states. I grew up in the Chicago metroplex and read Chicago poets like Sandberg, Masters, and Lindsay, but they didn't fall into place for me until I had lived in Springfield, and Galesburg Ill. I
skipped Lewiston but lived in other small towns like it. When I heard of and read Marx, I disavowed the regionalism, but re-avoweded it later when I learned how influential those downstate/and Chicago poets had been in the early Modernist movement. Today, I hear that Illinois has a lot of good poets--this from Rodney Jones, but I live just across the border in Burlington Iowa, where we grouse about the exclusivity of Iowa City and its Internationalism. It comes down to place for me. Whether all important, or empty conceit, it is how I know who I am. The sounds you hear in the poems have the stamp of thousands of conversations, and the life events of many working stiffs and climbers into the middle class. I am an ex-mechanic who went back to school on an MFA fellowship.