from COLLECTING CHICAGO POETRY

By Kenan Heise

Collectible Chicago poets, one finds, start with Eugene Field, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Harriet Monroe, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ana Castillo, David Hernandez, Li-Young Lee, William Wei-Yi Marr, and a raft of more recent poets that includes homeless ones published by StreetWise, ”the newspaper sold by and for the homeless of Chicago.”

Two of the most famous recent Chicago poets are both Chinese-Americans. Li-Young Lee has won a fortune in poetry awards as well as an extraordinary international reputation for such books as Rose and the city in which I love you. William Wei-Yi Marr has written principally in Chinese and is popular in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. He has a volume in English, Autumn Window.


About the author:
Kenan Heise, author, and retired journalist for the Chicago Tribune, frequently writes for AB. He has been a bookseller for more than 25 years and owns Chicago Historical Bookworks, a used and rare-book store in Evanston, Illinois. His most recent book is Chaos, Creativity and Culture: A Sampling of Chicago in the Twentieth Century (Gibbs, Smith, Publisher, 1999, $29.95). He also has written an acclaimed book of poetry, Our Dinosaurs are Dying (Chicago Historical Bookworks, 1994, $9.95)

Published in AB BOOKMAN’S WEEKLY, FOR THE SPECIALIST BOOK WORLD，March 2005.

节译自〈收藏芝加哥的诗〉
肯南•海斯 作

我们发现，值得收藏的芝加哥诗人，从尤金•费尔德，卡尔•桑德堡，艾德加•李•马斯特，哈丽爱特•曼罗，格温杜琳•布鲁克斯，安娜•克斯提罗，大卫•荷南德兹，李立扬，非马，到一批更近代的诗人包括一些收集在《芝加哥无家可归者的报纸》里的无家可归的诗人。

芝加哥近期最著名的诗人当中有两位是华裔。李立扬以他的诗集如《玫瑰》及《在我爱你的城市》获得各种诗奖赚了一大笔外，也赢得了非凡的国际声誉。非马主要用华文写作，在中国，台湾及东南亚都有相当的声望。他有一本英文诗集《秋窗》。

作者简介：
肯南•海斯是一位作家，也是《芝加哥论坛报》的退休新闻工作者。他在芝加哥北郊开了一个名叫“芝加哥史籍”的珍本旧书店。他的近著有《混乱、创造力与文化：二十世纪芝加哥掠影》。他还出版过一本广受欢迎的诗集《我们的恐龙快死了》。

原载：AB 书人周刊，给内行的书界，2005年3月。