Chicago Has No Beauty for Poet
Greek Star, June 29, 1928
With all its bridle paths, Chicago has no place for Pegasus.
Without directly challenging Chicago's hospitality, Sotiris Skipis, Greek poet and traveler, in the city for a few days, says that although there are plenty of clubs here for rich and poor, for businessmen, society figures and collegians, there is no place where poets meet.
Speaking through George Porikos, a Chicago attorney, for the poet does not understand much English, Mr. Skipis punctuated his words with smiles which needed no interpreter.
"In Paris and in Athens artists assemble in one locality, but here I cannot find such a meeting place," Mr. Skipis said. "In Paris one can go to the Closerie De Lilas and meet poets there. Here I can find plenty of clubrooms, but no place where poets gather."
2A rather tall, slender man, carefully dressed in a dark suit, Mr. Skipis has sensitive hands which aid his words to express his thoughts. This writer, who has been called the greatest lyric poet among modern Greeks by no lesser critics than Anatole France and Sir Edmund Gosse, feels that Chicago, despite its beautiful lake front and its handsome Stadium and Field Museum in the Greek style, is a city repulsive to artistic natures.
Like the famous Greek poets of old, Mr. Skipis deifies beauty. He maintains that the Greek spirit has been dormant, not dead, and is being revived by modern artists and writers. But Chicago does not have enough beauty yet to inspire artists, he believes.
"L" Structure Ugliest
"It is a great city, with more vitality than I have found elsewhere in the 3United States, but it is repulsive to the artist. It is not attractive to the eye except along the lake front. Buckingham Fountain is your most beautiful possession, and the elevated is the ugliest.
Mr. Skipis is to give several lectures to his countrymen before he leaves Chicago. Under the auspices of the Hellenic Club of Professional Men and the Nea Genea he is to lecture on June 29 in the Morrison Hotel. Another talk will be given before the Chicago chapter of Ahepa on July 5. Then Mr. Skipis will go to St. Louis, Minnepolis, and Montreal before he ends this first trip of his to America.
