Studs Terkel Drops a Mixtape

January 16, 19677

 

it started in the lobby of his parents’

boarding house; a thousand colloquialisms

& idiosyncratic speech patterns. it started

with a kid in a cab, the discipline

of empathy. the tape recorder

a time machine. a teleporter. mirror

& mountaintop. it started talking

to 200 everyday people. no celebrity.

edited 70. ages 15 to 90: bar owners & alcoholics,

a Native American boiler man, activists,

racists, teachers & the forgotten who live

alone in furnished rooms. populism

on the page. guerilla journalism

before it was called that. it started

in Bug House Square: the denizen forum

for radicals & miscreants, the genius & insane

lines blurred, irrelevant. here is the collected

memory of a city that is the country

the microcosm. the division in us all.