The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1921-08-31
Frederic Haskin's Letter
Beauty and the Beef.

Chicago, Aug. 31.-The infection
of artistic and literary bacilit,
which has been disturbing the
! sound commercial constitution OF
Chicago for some years past, has
broken out in new spot The
spot is somewhere in the region
north of the Chicago river and
between the Lake and State street.
1t is little shop, which used
to be called the Old Tower Book
Shop. Apparently the book-selling
! didn't pay, and the shop now sells
a variety of art and artistic wares
too numerous to enumerate- 1t is
also the headquarters of an or
ganization for the purpose Of find
ing jobs for women writers and ed
itors. managed by Miss Ruby
Black.
But its real distinction is Meth
er as a shop nor as an agency for
the distribution of beautiful
scribes Its real distinction is that
here, once a week, poets and poet
esses meet and read their works to
themselves ard each other and any
one else who cares to listen. Some
Sd L1dt IACi al . CatAS wv AhCCN-
ings a week at this place. Ac-
cording to this story, when the
word went round that any poet
could get an audience for his verses
at this place. the poets poured in
so rapidly and numerously that
there simply was not time for all
of them to read ali that they had 10
give the world. Besides that, a lot
of people came who didn't really
appreciate poetry at all. So a circle
was organized, and now there is
another meeting every week to
which only the really elect are adj
mitted. At least, so they say.
This reading circle seems to con-
sist chiefly of poets of whom the
world at large has not yet heard,
although there are one or two Of
them who publish regularly 1t
includes some poets and poeteSses
who have never even tried to pub
hsh their works-who seem to have
scorned the public so far. Among
these is a woman who calls her
poems collectively "Dishpan Lyr-
les. She is a woman who has
spent most Of her life cooking and
washing dishes, SO they say, and she
has put into pulsing meter the
thoughts and emotions, the rebel,
lions and hopes OF the housewife
tied to humble tasks, escaping only
in her imagination. Her friends say
that her verses would appeal to a
large public, but she has fever
sought to reach it
An Aesthetic Oasis.
Whether this little shop is really
a nest of unpublished genius or not,
it. is certainly one more center of
intellectual aspiration in the great
est business place of the west. 1t
is one more court of beauty in the
city of beef, one more phase of the
strange process by which the city
that typifies American commercial |
ism and money lust at its most in |
tense, is also becoming a city of !
poets, painters and dreamers, a !
city in which the aesthetic impulse |
is seen in it's most rarefed and ex-
traVagant forms.
Perhaps the phenomenon is not |
really mysterious, either. Perhaps |
reaction. Chicago is the place /
where Inc great industrial push,
which has used most of Americas f.
energy for half a century, reached !
its greatest power. 1t may be only
natural that here the reaction |
against commercialism should be
most marked and extreme.
Then, too, the course of intellect !,
ual empire in America seems now /
to be moving westward. A hundred
years ago Boston was the intellect
uaI center of America. Then it
shifted to New York. It probably
remains there. but New York is
more and more becoming a mere
for literary wares, while the
people that make them seem more