Roger Reeves went to Pullman the other day to work on a poem. He stepped from his car and watched for the rhythm of the neighborhood to reveal itself. Some people do this for a living. They are called poets. “I want to be catapulted into a poem,” he explained. “I’m listening for music, collecting detail, looking for something.” Reeves, whose watchful poems are attuned to the smallest telling detail in the everyday world, was writing a poem about Pullman, commissioned by the National Park Service and the Academy of American Poets, for the centennial of the Park Service.
“Doesn’t feel like Chicago, does it?” he said.
Fifteen miles south of the Loop, a world apart from Chicago, yet part of Chicago, the Pullman Historic District feels grand, and still, a former company town founded in the late 19th century that lost its company, and now, on a weekday, has the air of a place where the people have mostly vanished but their homes remain, lovely and brick; indeed, for the past century, the population of Pullman rarely reached beyond 10,000 residents, and now it has only 7,000, on about 250 acres. Reeves pulled out his notebook.
We walked.
Being designated a national park in 2015 by President Barack Obama has not meant a daily crush of tour buses, and Pullman, 18 months later, feels lovingly, even pointedly, untended to, a rebuke to the rest of the gentrifying city. Reeves noted the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag in a window, the bees spiraling in the sunlight around wooden frames in a backyard colony, the ruins of Market Hall, built in 1881, only to burn then burn again, the black char on its ancient lumber still evident. A woman crossed East 103rd Street with a pink scarf on her head. Reeves made a note in his journal, his handwriting tight and precise.
We rounded a corner.
He stopped.
Along a stone wall was an alley doubling as an art gallery, not graffiti murals, but paintings, in rain-beaten frames, a “No Wake” sign from a boatyard, knitted Hummel portraits, much more. Castoff flea market-type finds. “The longer I stand here the more I am seeing,” Reeves said, and went to the front door of the home next to the wall and called a phone number taped in the window. After a short conversation with the owner, he returned, laughing: “You know, there is way too much to fit into one poem.”
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We walked a few blocks and crossed Cottage Grove Avenue until we came upon a large man standing outside of a red brick castle with red barn doors and old stone horse heads. The man was Nick Lubovich and the building, built by Schlitz in 1906 as a stable for its horses, is now Argus Brewery. Reeves said, “Nick, I’m Roger, and the Academy of American Poets and National Park Service commissioned me to write this poem about Pullman, we were walking and —”
“You saw my alley gallery!”
Reeves smiled. “You are attracted to history, and so am I.” Indeed, there are two national parks in Illinois (the other is Lincoln’s home in Springfield), and Reeves chose Pullman for many reasons, because of its seclusion, because of his interest in labor movement leader A. Philip Randolph (who organized the first African-American union here), because the place had been founded by industrialist George Pullman as a utopia.
“Pullman is a living museum, man,” Lubovich said. “Here is Norm.”
A friend of Nick’s stepped forward. “Stormin’ Norman,” Norm said.
“Stormin’,” Reeves nodded.
“I’m brewery historian,” Lubovich said. “Came to Pullman 10 years ago. Norm just moved here. There was a house I wanted. Called the owner every month for six years. Some months we yelled at each other! ‘You are never getting this (expletive) house!’ I’d go home feeling I had been fired and couldn’t tell my wife! Lo and behold, we got that house.” A man in a red cap approached. “This is brewery founder Bob Jensen.”
Reeves shook hands.
“This guy,” Lubovich said, motioning to Jensen. “Writing a poem.”
Reeves smiled but didn’t explain more: That the poem would live on the Academy of American Poets website, that the National Park Service had been founded partly through the inspiration of artists (Hudson River School painters, for instance) who saw in vast American spaces a muse and grandeur. He didn’t mention that he is an assistant professor of poetry at University of Illinois at Chicago, and came to the city six years ago, won a 2013 Pushcart Prize (for his poem “The Field Museum”), and the 2015 Whiting Award (given to emerging poets); he didn’t say that he received his Ph.D. in English at University of Texas at Austin, and that as an undergraduate at Morehouse College in Atlanta he ran NCAA cross country, or that he came from southern New Jersey, a stone’s throw from its cranberry bogs. Instead he just said: “Pullman’s more South than Chicago.”
“It’s Bob’s birthday,” Lubovich said.
Jensen lowered his head. “Every time Bob is here it’s his birthday,” Lubovich said, laughing.
“Are we in Pullman?” Reeves asked.
“Historic Pullman,” Lubovich said. “Technically, Roseland. Depends who’s in office.”
“My son is white and had dreads that would challenge yours,” Jensen said to Reeves. “Went to the middle of his back. Took a razor and cut them off. Thought he would save them for some poor Rastafarian! Who wouldn’t know they came from a white Irish kid!”
“Well, he has a good heart,” Reeves said, and asked Jensen’s background.
“One of my ancient relatives was St. Sven,” Jensen said without hesitation, “a Dane who conquered Dublin, met St. Patrick and converted to Catholicism. So some of our beer recipes were inspired by that conversion — that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!”
“Trust me,” Reeves said, “all of this will be in the poem in weird ways.”
Lubovich moved to the front door of the brewery. He stood on the threshold and after hesitating a moment, as though preparing to make an announcement: “I don’t think I shall hear a poem lovelier than a beer! The brew that Argus has on tap, its foamy cap and its golden base, is foamy stuff that I drink all day, until my memories fade away!”
Once the applause died, Reeves said, “I need to write that down.”
“My great ancestor?” Lubovich said. “William Shakespeare. Boom!”
Back at the car several hours later, Reeves sat in silence then said: “My mom used to say it is a poor frog who doesn’t praise his own pond. That was great. Nick was great. I used to think that writing put you in a position to have a better life, but this is the better life, right now, isn’t it? No matter what I write, it was just great to be out in the world.”
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