Pilsen Snow by Philip C. Kolin (review)

In Pilsen Snow, you can feel the crunch of dead snow under your feet, and smell the oats malt and hops drifting through the poems from the breweries in this old Chicago neighborhood. In the first poem in the collection, Kolin states, “the bitter air of winter smelled / like a drunkard’s breath” (1). With this line, we realize we are in a strange place, walking on words that take us back in time to a community of Czech immigrants. People who enriched the culture of Chicago by recreating the old world they brought with them on ships from their native Czechoslovakia.

In these poems, we meet Czechs who live half their day remembering the old world, and trying to preserve it, while at the same time adapting to the new world, in a poor neighborhood. Their greatest hope was to offer their children a better future. In this cold place, heroes are born and nurtured, and new meaning is given to the term, achieving the American dream. This collection of poems is a delicious blend of flavors, sights and sounds that will give the reader a sense of place, time and community, preserved in words and memories that will translocate the spirit via the power of poetic discourse.

Kolin uses a chronological approach to arrange the poems in the chapbook. The first section contains poems about the settling of Pilsen at the turn of the 20th century, “No place for anything green. / Here is where they looked for paradise.” (1), from “Eden in Pilsen.” In the first section of the book we encounter the elders, fresh from Czechoslovakia, determined to preserve the old ways. “They never left the old country / behind. They packed it into / suitcases: recipes, family / Bibles and the Czech language” (3). The desire to preserve Czech history is seen again in, “The Pilsen Saints.” “Their saints sailed with them— / Ludmila, Procopius, Vitus” (4). The Saints were a part of Czech life in Chicago: “Saint Ludmila martyred for her faith, Saint Procopius of Sázava, the hermit saint, and Saint Vitus, the patron saint of dancers. As with many cultural icons, the venerated saints were replaced by Mexican icons; as noted in the same poem, “Gaudalupanos did not pray the “Zadravas Maria”/ or hold Velarios—wakes—for the vanishing/Czech saints” (5).

The poem “The Pilsen Saints” is also the beginning of a transition from the Czech culture to Latino. The theme is repeated in some of the other poems as warnings of changing times. From the poem “Wallpaper,” “No one living there now / understands Czech or cares” (26). And from “Czech Hieroglyphics,” “The sunlight no longer speaks / with a Slavic accent in Pilsen” (27). This short collection acts as an archaeological dig into a world covered by the indomitable force of change. Each poem is like a fine relic, giving us some insight into a world existing in the memory of those who once lived there, but slowly fading, as memory fades, and as the elders die out.

A prominent theme in the chapbook is one of identifying the important citizen who hailed from Pilsen, and those who served the community. The first one honored with a poem is Antonin J. Cermak, Chicago’s 35th mayor who spent time in the Pilsen neighborhood. This wonderful poem, “The Abe Lincoln of Pilsen,” portrays Cermak as a beloved leader of the oppressed. Kolin quotes from his emancipation declaration:

I didn’t come overOn the Mayflower butI came over as soon as I could.

(6)

The poem ends with these lines: “50,000 more mourners wept lilacs at your gravesite. / Grief like gangrene crippled Pilsened America” (7).

Another noted figure from Pilsen was Kim Novak, the famous film and television actor, best known today for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Vertigo (1958), with James Stewart. The poem “Kim” gives the reader a glimpse into the honored position she held in the Pilsen community. “But your father still dispatches trains / for...