The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1921-09-02

CHICAGO, H., Sept. 1.-THE infec-
ton of artistic and literary bacilli,
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. II 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 arty and artistic wares too numer-
Gus to enumerate. 1t is also the head
quarters of an organization for the
purpose of finding jobs for women
writers and editors, managed by Miss
Ruby Black.
But its real distinction is neither as
a shop nor as an agency for the dis
tribution of beautiful scribes. Its real
distinction is that here, once a week,
poets and poetesses meet and read
their works to themselves and each
other and any one else who cares to
listen. Some say that there are really
two meetings a week at this place
According 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 all that
they had to give the world. Besides
that, 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 ad
mitted AT least, so they say.
This reading circle seems to consist
chiefly of poets of whom the world
at large has not yet heard, although
there are one or two of them who pub
lish regularly. 1t includes some poets
and poetesses who have never even
tried to publish their wcrks-whc
seem to have scorned the public sc
far Among these is woman who
calls her poems collectively "Dishpar
Lyrics" She is woman who has
spent most of her life cooking anC
washing dishes, so they say, and she
has put into pulsing meter the
thoughts and emotions, the rebellions
and hopes of the housewife tied tt
humble tasks, escaping only in hel
Imagination. Her friends say that hel
verses would appeal to a large public
but she has never sought to reach it
An Aesthetic Oasis.
Whether this little shop is really {
nest of unpublished genius or not, i
is certainly one more center of intel
lectual aspiration in the greatest bust
ness place of the West. 1t is one more
court of beauty in the city of beef, one
more phase of the strange process b!
which the city that typifies American
commercialism and money lust at it!
most intense, is also becoming a cit.
of poets, painters and dreamers,
city in which the aesthetic impulse il
seen in its most rarefied and eXtrav
agant forms.
Perhaps the phenomenon is no
really mysterious, either. Perhaps i
! is partly matter of action and reac
ton. Chicago is the place where tn,
great industrial push, which has uset
most of Americas energy for half ;
century, reached it's greatest power
1t may be only natural that here thu
reaction against commercialism SHOULD
| be most marked and extreme.
Then, too, the course of intellectual
empire in America seems now to b.
moving westward. A hundred year
ago Boston was the intellectual cente
of America. Then it shifted to New
York. 1t probably remains there, bu
| New York is more and more becom