“There were so many stunning poems. Thank you to all the writers who looked at my painting and offered brilliant responses. ‘What the Pages Know’ articulates the essence of this painting and leads me to understand my own artwork as a collage of memories or ‘whatever it is that calls you/ back to something unfinished.’ The poet writes that the spots of color were ‘alive with the trick of language’ reminding me that words and colors are metaphors for specific feelings, perhaps assigned to something as ethereal as ‘the hour/ she forgot to pray’ or ‘the pink she almost wore.’ I love the vapor-like energy of these ‘birds or verdicts’ that keep pulsating throughout our lives but that we cannot capture because they ‘dissolve(d) when held, like stories told too often/ or people gone too long,’ the melancholy of time and space. The exchange from the painting to the poems offers great insight into my own practice. I enjoyed reading all the poems.”

“I have always loved haiku and was happy to learn about haibun in a poetry workshop from Rich Youmans, the coeditor of a book about writing haibun. I love the format for writing brief memoir pieces.”

“When people ask me, ‘Well what makes Chicago style different?’ I say, ‘It’s genuine.’ Because, like the show, your bullshit gets you just so far and then somebody’s going to call you on it in Chicago. It’s always been that way.”

“‘I Owe You a Poem’ pretty much outlines what I feel about poetry: that I’d love it to be something we use on a daily basis. We’ve spent the past century mainly asking poems to be smarter than us, that if they don’t need to be explained down to us by someone with a PhD then what good are they? I do like a good, difficult poem, but I also love a poem that’s clear; and I’ve seen how writing down a feeling in a way that makes others feel that precise shade of it takes a mountain of effort which isn’t recognized enough in much of our writing culture. In any case, look me up.”

“I grew up with stories of the Partition of India, and the trauma and heartbreak it inflicted upon millions, including both sets of my grandparents. I am struck by the continued sacrifices and loss of lives required to uphold the identities of these two nations, which share so many social, cultural, linguistic and artistic commonalities, because they were at one point, one.”

“As a kid growing up on the west side of Chicago, my ideas about life and love were pretty much defined by whatever Motown song was out at the moment. I began working on a manuscript about the formidable sway Motown music held over me, which was particularly timely because the label had just celebrated its 50th anniversary. In the midst of crafting the book, however, I realized that what I was really writing about was being part of that first confounded generation born in cluttered, segregated northern cities after our parents had migrated from Alabama, from Mississippi, from Arkansas, from Louisiana. We began an urban existence with no real guidance—and music, among other things, raised us. ‘Tavern. Tavern. Church. Shuttered tavern,’ chronicles a bus ride down Madison St., the main strip slicing through Chicago’s west side. The street, the center of the community’s commerce, was burned flat during the riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination, and was only rebuilt years later when white folks realized its proximity to downtown, and therefore its worth.”