Essay: George R. Stewart: Unrestrained by literary borders
A conversation with a writer is, almost always, interesting and insightful. During a long career as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, I was paid to talk with many, [...]
Book review: “Maskerade” by Terry Pratchett
In his more than four dozen novels, Terry Pratchett was often silly, witty, wacky and goofy. But he was also, always, serious. Pratchett’s delightfully humorous and endlessly readable books weren’t [...]
Book review: “Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century” by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph
Dorothy Day — that radical of 20th century radicals, that voice of conscience in the face of a self-centered, self-indulgent, greedy American culture, that embracer of the neediest, [...]
Poem: Behind the mask
Behind the mask By Patrick T. Reardon (mask) Behind the museum glass, a polished marble scream, frozen, with large round eye openings, pale stone, gray as smoke, [...]
Poem: “Go”
Go By Patrick T. Reardon In remembrance of Maggie Roche, Ben Scheinkopf, George Kresovich and David Reardon Right onto Cermak from Harlem to go west, listening to [...]
Poem: The lost tribes, part 3
The lost tribes, part 3 By Patrick T. Reardon The lost tribes found me alone as she and he stared into each other’s eyes. They found me with [...]
Poem: Word
Word By Patrick T. Reardon Declaw the lion King to a plaster saint. Declaw Lincoln to a penny. Declaw Francis to a birdbath. Declaw the man with nails [...]
Poem: Saw you at the hop
Saw you at the hop By Patrick T. Reardon I was nine when I saw you through open eighth grade door — before you went to Army, to Europe, [...]
Book review: “Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance: New Negro Writers, Artists and Intellectuals 1893-1930,” edited by Richard A. Courage and Christopher Robert Reed
In November, 1904, Fannie Barrier Williams, activist, iconoclast, orator and writer, led an attack on racism with a tea cup. She and other members of Chicago’s interracial Frederick Douglass Center [...]
Poem: “Goddess Dementia”
Goddess Dementia By Patrick T. Reardon Goddess Dementia, come, waltz with me down gray floors, along sour green walls, through Muzak air. Undress me in my doorless [...]