A sword, a grandmother’s shawl, a Rolex watch, a cow-shaped cream pitcher, a 2008 gold Toyota Corolla. The stories of these objects—and others—are told within this volume. They are the stories of objects left, lost, or kept. Together, they compose a mosaic of Chicago immigration. 
 
Like a mosaic, the individual items in these stories might seem unrelated, but taken together, connection and complexity emerge. Chicago is made, to a large extent, of the stark regrets and hopes of immigrants. Some of the objects in this volume represent difficult memories of family left behind; others point to the possibility of prosperity for future generations.

In this first-of-its-kind annual anthology, student-editors from DePaul University canvas the United States, seeking outstanding poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and journalism in both English and Spanish from thousands of high schools. The result is a dazzling celebration of our country’s diverse young voices.

American Gun: A Poem by 100 Chicagoans is a collective response to the individual suffering behind the statistics. Big Shoulders Books editor Chris Green asked one-hundred poets from across the city to take turns writing a communal poem about Chicago’s gun violence. The poets range in age, gender, race, ethnicity, and poetic experience. Such well-known poets as Ed Hirsch, Haki Madhubuti, Ed Roberson, Marc Smith, Ana Castillo, and Kevin Coval write with teen poets from the South and West sides . . . many from the group Young Chicago Authors, but also young poets from Chicago’s alternative high schools, where statistically, students experience the most gun violence in the city.

The poem is a pantoum, a poetic form where every line is repeated twice. Green chose this form because its structure of repeating lines mirrors the semi-automatic firing of a weapon and also the seemingly endless cycle of shootings in Chicago.

In 2019, Chicago police seized over 10,000 guns—an average of one gun every 48 minutes, which gives you a sense of how many weapons are on the streets. However, the main title of this poem, American Gun, points to the gun epidemic as not simply a Chicago problem, but an American one. Despite the rhetoric of conservative political and corporate interests, most Americans (including NRA members) want more sensible gun laws. Our country needs more truth, more collaboration—something like this poem where diverse people sing together in sanity and beauty. When politics fails us, poetry tells us we are not alone in our outrage and hope.

This beautiful book is built on the simplest of premises: “I remember.” Here are Chicago’s bravest, remembering all of what war can be. Theirs are memories that sear and soar and won’t be easily forgotten—not by them, of course, not ever, and not by the rest of us, either, as we become their witnesses.
—David Finkel (author of The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service)

Birds have been falling from the sky in droves, causing people to cry apocalypse. While we’re not ready to go that far, it’s a good time to step back and think about the natural world, how one responds to it and lives within it. Some sixty artists have done just that in the groundbreaking new anthology, Brute Neighbors: urban nature poetry, prose & photography, edited by poet Chris Green and environmental scientist Liam Heneghan. The book features some of Chicago’s best writers: Reginald Gibbons, Stuart Dybek, Christian Wiman, Don Share, Christina Pugh, Mark Turcotte, and more.

These poems celebrate both the hope embodied in the man, Barack Obama, and a renewed hope for the promise of American democracy. So natural an act as praise seems a wondrous release after the necessity to protest the previous eight years of disastrous American policy.
—Stuart Dybek

This anthology of varied voices feels like a single praise song, in the spirit of a larger democratic project, with varying pitch and tone, and this nuance is accomplished without sacrificing the uniqueness of each poet. The reader actually encounters an element of the Barack Obama phenomenon; the philosophy of a shared experience at this poignant juncture in the life of America seems to focus the collection. At times candid and truth-seeking, personal and public, entertaining and meditative, urban and suburban, imagistic and indebted to orality, these wonderful poems not only convey the complexity of Chitown, but they also unmask the nation’s soul, without being nostalgic or overly whimsical. We all can embrace this Obama-inspired anthology of timely praise.
—Yusef Komunyakaa