Our Next Workshop: Kenneth Fearing

Monday, July 6th
(6:00-7:00, 7:15-8:30 p.m.)

Mozart Park Fieldhouse
2036 N. Avers Ave.
Chicago, IL   60647

all ages, free & open to the public
all ages, free & open to the public

You're invited to come to our next workshop, which is inspired by Kenneth Fearing. Poet/novelist/essayist Kenneth Fearing was born in Oak Park in 1902. More than fifty years after his death in 1961, he remains one of the most original & under-appreciated Chicago-born writers. He published numerous pulp stories, seven collections of poems and eight novels, including The Big Clock (1946), a thriller that helped to define the genre of film noir when Paramount adapted it in 1948. Few of his works remain in print today, probably because of his radical politics. In the 1930s, he was one of the most respected poets of the Popular Front and a founding editor of The Partisan Review; in 1950 he was called before HUAC. In response to the question, “are you a member of the Communist Party?” he is said to have replied, “Not yet.”

Fearing's poems and novels are machinic assemblages—big machines made of words—that critique the mechanization and mediation of white American society. In Clark Gifford's Body (1942), he uses multiple narrators to describe a futuristic version of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, which leads to a proletarian/capitalist civil war. The raid is conducted not on an armory, but a radio station, reflecting Fearing's belief that broadcast media was the most important weapon in modern America. In Loneliest Girl in the World (1951), he employs multiple narrators—including a rudimentary computer—to ask what might become of romance in a bureaucratic, post-human society.

Come to learn more about / debate / be inspired by Kenneth Fearing. We will use Infernal Machine Poetics (IMP) technology to further our understanding of one of our region's most engaging political artists.

Bring your musical instruments, art supplies and notebooks. These workshops are interactive and multidisciplinary. We have supplies and equipment on hand that workshop participants can use -- including pencils, pens, paint, a piano, other musical instruments.

Location: Mozart Park is in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. It's on the north side of Armitage Ave. -- several blocks east of Pulaski Rd., just south of Dickens and Shakespeare Streets. Our workshop series happens in the room to the left of fieldhouse lobby; some workshop sessions may happen outside in the park, weather permitting. 

Transportation & parking: Mozart Park can be reached by public transportation (such as the #73 Armitage Ave. bus, and not far from the Logan Square and Western Ave. stations on the CTA's blue line. Mozart Park has a parking lot on Armitage, east of Avers.

Registering for Chicago Portraits & Arts Journeys: Click here or here to register for the summer term at the Chicago Park District website.

Additional info: You can contact us by clicking here (if you have questions about this workshop or to RSVP). Click here to find out more about the Chicago Portraits & Arts Journeys workshop series.

Links:

• "Brother Can You Spare a Biff, Bam, Oof!!!" by Robert Polito (Poetry Foundation)
• "Cabinet of Subversive Books, Vol. 4: Antonin Artaud and Kenneth Fearing" by DJ Pangburn (Death and Taxes)
• "Dirge" by Kenneth Fearing
• Kenneth Fearing (Guggenheim Foundation)
• Kenneth Fearing (Modern American Poetry)
• POETRY Magazine (May 1940)