In her poem “The Color Red,” Maxine Chernoff mentions a family legend: that her great-grandmother “was the first Jewish woman in Bialystok, Russia, to wear lipstick. A shame on her family, she also smoked cigarettes.” But that’s not why she left Russia. She left because her son with yam-colored hair was caught stealing apples. So off he sailed to become a “real estate baron in Los Angeles.”
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Chernoff grew up in “Eddie Vrdolyak country,” she says, “on the southeast side, in a neighborhood I never knew the name of. It was a strange mix of people–partly Jewish, some Slavic-Croatian, and Mexican steel-mill workers. There was a huge tribe of Yugoslavian Catholics who lived in four houses next to each other.” This tribe provided playmates for Chernoff, whose only sibling was a sister eight years older. Chernoff’s grandmother, who came from Russia and spoke only Yiddish because she was deaf, lived with the family. “She taught me to crochet and play checkers,” says Chernoff. “And she let me bite her. If I lost at checkers, she’d let me bite her. So she was nice.”
Early on Chernoff wrote prose poems, some of which were published in the Paris Review when she was only 23. This was an electrifying time for poetry in Chicago, Chernoff recalls, especially the weekly Monday-night reading series at the Body Politic. “Ted Berrigan was in Chicago then, and he was the reigning king of the readings. He’d comment out loud on people’s writing as they read. It was a funny and lively atmosphere.” The series also featured poets like Robert Creeley who were passing through town. “It made you think that being a poet was going to be exciting, meaningful, and also socially good–fun.”
Chernoff began teaching at Truman College ten years ago. She is now assistant chair of its Communications Department, which she enjoys because “it’s like pretending you’re a grown-up.” She still teaches there and at the Art Institute. With her husband she edits the award-winning literary magazine New American Writing.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Al Kawano.
