Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Lew Welch’s "Chicago Poem" is an unflinching reckoning with the city’s oppressive physical and industrial landscape, a meditation on its crushing weight and the existential despair it produces. Written in a voice that is at once observational and deeply personal, the poem oscillates between raw critique and moments of surprising beauty, ultimately culminating in a quiet act of resistance: the speaker’s decision to walk away. The poem is both a document of lived experience and an expression of the psychological toll exacted by Chicago’s sheer immensity, its dehumanizing industry, and its relentless environmental and social decay.

The opening lines set the tone for the poem’s exploration of Chicago’s bleakness: "I lived here nearly 5 years before I could meet the middle western day with anything approaching / Dignity." The delay in achieving even a semblance of dignity suggests that the city resists accommodation; it is a place one must endure rather than embrace. The starkness of the Midwest, particularly Chicago’s unnatural scale and industrial sprawl, forces a confrontation with something primal—something Welch equates with biblical severity: "It’s a place that lets you understand why the Bible is the way it is: / Proud people cannot live here. / The land’s too flat." The invocation of the Bible suggests that the landscape itself shapes human character, grinding down those who attempt to resist it.

Chicago, in Welch’s vision, is a place of "ugly sullen and big" proportions, where the sky is "heavy and terrible", pushing people downward, making them "stoop at 35". This is a city that ages people prematurely, not with the refined wear of time but with a kind of industrial and existential erosion. In such a setting, Welch posits that "there can be no God but Jahweh," emphasizing a severe, Old Testament deity whose presence is felt in suffering rather than in redemption. The city itself functions as a metaphorical hell, its "mills and refineries" burning off "natural gas in flames / Bouncing like bunsens from stacks a hundred feet high." The imagery here is violent and unrelenting—Chicago is a machine consuming itself, a place where industry does not merely produce but desecrates.

The poem’s industrial vision deepens with a recollection of childhood education: "Remember the movies in grammar school? / The goggled men doing strong things in / Showers of steel-spark?" This romanticized depiction of labor is revealed to be a carefully constructed illusion, manufactured by those who would rather aestheticize industry than confront its reality. Welch contrasts this sanitized image with the memory of Sievers, whose old man spent most of his life in there, who offers a brutal, unsentimental counter-image: "a ‘nigger in a red T-shirt pissing into the black sand.’" The contrast exposes the hypocrisy of the industrial mythology taught to children and the racial and economic exploitation that underpins it.

Yet, the poem is not wholly given to despair. Welch’s speaker undergoes a transformation: "It was 5 years until I could afford to recognize the ferocity. Friends helped me. Then / I put some Love into my house." This moment marks a turning point, where the speaker begins to reclaim agency, to resist the city’s eroding effect by cultivating personal space and relationships. The discovery of "quid lakes and a farm where they let me shoot pheasant" provides a reprieve from the overwhelming urban forces. The act of hunting—a primal, autonomous engagement with the land—stands in stark contrast to the dehumanizing, mechanical nature of Chicago.

A particularly luminous moment follows: "Standing in the boat one night I watched the lake go absolutely flat. / Smaller than raindrops, and only / Here and there, the feeding rings of fish were visible a hundred yards away— / and the / Blue Gill caught that afternoon / Lifted from its northern lake like a tropical! Jewel at its ear / Belly gold so bright you’d swear he had a Light in there." This passage offers a vision of natural beauty that exists beyond human interference, a stark contrast to the earlier imagery of industrial flames and polluted skies. The fish’s "color faded with his life," reinforcing a central theme: that beauty, when removed from its natural context, is transient, vulnerable to human intrusion.

Welch follows this meditation on nature with a sobering realization: "All things considered, it’s a gentle and undemanding planet, even here." The land itself is not to blame—rather, "The trouble is always and only with what we build on top of it." This is the core indictment of the poem: humanity has taken something inherently livable and transformed it into something unbearable. The city, the industry, the pollution, the toil—these are human constructs, and there is "nobody else to blame." The despair deepens: "You can’t fix it and you can’t make it go away." Unlike in traditional narratives of resistance, there is no rallying cry, no grand solution. The damage has been done.

As the poem nears its conclusion, the speaker encounters a final, overwhelming vision of Chicago: "Driving back I saw Chicago rising in its gases / and I knew again that never will the / Man be made to stand against this pitiless, unparalleled monstrosity." The city is not just oppressive; it is unstoppable. Welch describes it as a "blind, red, rhinoceros", a grotesque, lumbering beast incapable of seeing the destruction it causes. It "snuffles on the beach of its Great Lake," a disturbing image of unchecked growth and thoughtless consumption.

The poem ends with a quietly radical gesture: "I don’t know what you’re going to do about it, / But I know what I’m going to do about it. / I’m just going to walk away from it." Unlike many modernist or Beat poets who engage in grand proclamations or attempts to fix the world through art, Welch chooses a simple, personal act of defiance—leaving. The final lines—"Maybe / A small part of it will die if I’m not around feeding it anymore."—suggest a philosophy of disengagement rather than confrontation. Rather than attempting to reform or fight against the machine, the speaker refuses to participate in its perpetuation.

"Chicago Poem" is an indictment of industrialization, capitalism, and the dehumanizing nature of modern cities. It is a lament for what has been lost—dignity, connection to the land, the ability to exist without suffocation—but also a recognition that there is no easy way back. The poem captures the existential exhaustion of recognizing systemic failure and knowing that individual resistance may not be enough. Welch’s decision to walk away is neither victory nor defeat—it is survival. In a world where the city "will never be made to stand against", sometimes the only act of agency left is to refuse to feed the beast.

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