Poetry And Politics Chicago Style
By Robert Klein Engler (03/28/05)
Many families in the Boston area are pleased that Norman Porter is back behind bars. He murdered two people and escaped from prison, then went on the lam for 20 years. Meanwhile, in Chicago there is dismay in the poetry community. Norman Porter was discovered to be the so-called poet J. J. Jameson. As a "poet" he embraced many liberal causes and pushed the best progressive political buttons in what Carl Sandburg called "City of the Big Shoulders."
Known as "The Carpenter of Words," Porter/Jameson was the author of two books of "poetry," Lady Rutherfurd's Cauliflower and Lord Rutherfurd's Rutabaga. He had a reputation among the saloon poets of Chicago as a crusty old man with an ironic view of life. Porter/Jameson was even "Poet of the Month" on C. J. Laity's website, ChicagoPoetry.com. On occasion, you could see Porter/Jameson speaking at Bughouse Square by the Newberry Library or reading poems against the war in Iraq. He had all the proper, liberal credentials to be a poet in Chicago.
David Gecic, Porter/Jameson's publisher maintains that, "Over the years I saw JJ do many acts of kindness and charity and saw him pass acts of kindness done to him to the next guy. He cooked meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas at homeless shelters and senior homes...He was very involved in Chicago politics, and among his friends and associates were congressmen and aldermen. He worked in the Ukrainian Village for Harold Washington's reelection."
E-poets.net's editor Kurt Heintz writes, "Jameson is a New Englander by birth, a progressive by politics, labor activist by ethical necessity, and a working man by trade. Jameson is a frequent figure at Chicago's College of Complexes, an open forum on politics and progressive thought with a tradition extending back to the 1950s."
In a different vein, we read in TheBostonChannel.com, "When he escaped from the Norfolk Pre-Release Center 20 years ago, Porter was serving two life sentences for murder. As a violent young robber, he had not so poetically put a shotgun to the back of a store clerk's head and pulled the trigger. Then, while awaiting trial, he escaped the Middlesex Jail by killing the superintendent with a smuggled gun...According to police, after the initial shock (of being arrested in Chicago), he said, 'I've had a good 20 years.'"
In most media coverage of Porter/Jameson there is little mention of his so-called poems nor examples of them. And why should there be? The liberal poetry community in Chicago is not really interested in what a man writes. Politics and personality are more important in this community than poetry or prose. This is why a shock wave rumbled through Chicago's poetry scene when people read the newspaper headline, "Killer Poet Arrested on the West Side." Many were dismayed that Jameson was not who they thought he was. Yet, it was not Jameson's poetry that dismayed these progressive thinkers, but his personality.
What is significant about the media coverage in Chicago of this "killer poet" is the assumption that the liberal press makes. Many reporters assume that poetry and progressive causes go hand in hand. It must come as a surprise to these reporters that there could be better poets who prefer a politics different from that of the moribund, Democratic party in Chicago.
Look at what Porter/Jameson writes. His "The Puttering Penis" can be found posted at ChicagoPoetry.com. This so-called poem pretends to be a response to "The Vagina Monologues." Reading it, one discovers that Jameson has nothing poetic to write. His lines, "I put my ear down close,/I mean really, really close,/I wanted to hear every spluttering syllable..." couldn't be more prosaic than what we might find in a mediocre, high school essay poking fun at human reproduction. Most of Jameson's other poems follow in the same prosaic style. If men were jailed for bad poetry, then the law would have caught up with Porter/Jameson years ago.
The Porter/Jameson case shows us again what we have come to expect. Most poetry in Chicago is really propaganda for moribund, liberal politics. Perhaps that's why Porter/Jameson picked Chicago as the perfect city where he could hide in plain sight. Failed Democratic policies in education have been hiding in plain sight for 20 years in Chicago, too. As the propaganda arm of liberalism, poetry in Chicago is as exhausted as the policies of the city's mayor. Jameson kept his double murder a secret just as Democratic politicians in Chicago keep the secret that they are the real cause of the urban problems they claim to solve.
Once a secret is known, an opportunity for change also may be known. Porter/Jameson's double life makes it possible for some to lead a better life and to be better poets. They may see, now, that a liberal and progressive ideology is simply a tool used by those in power to keep power, not to share it. Likewise, just because we share an ideology, it does not mean that we also share a talent for writing poetry. Jameson disappointed many, but this disappointment may become an appointment with truth. That could help to make better poets and a better politics.
If J. J. Jameson doesn't get to read his poems at Bughouse Square again because he is behind bars in Massachusetts, then Chicagoans won't be missing much. Free verse in Chicago poetry and liberalism in Chicago politics are worn-out, 20th century forms. Poetry in Chicago did not suffer a setback with the arrest of Norman Porter. Poetry in this city was already backwards and part of the illusionary world that liberalism props up with propaganda. Perhaps in another time and in a reformed Chicago, J. J. Jameson's poetry will be seen to be as misguided as Norman Porter's murderous deeds.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Robert Klein Engler
