New Chicago: An oratorio with or without music, by Patrick T. Reardon

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

New Chicago is an incantatory tour through a gritty, mystical and biblical Chicago with side trips to the rest of America and the world. It is a fever-dream vision of pain and outrage, kindness and embrace.

Inspired by the libretto of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah: An Oratorio, New Chicago is an anthem of the unity of all people, suffering the same suffering, confused with the same confusions, each a sinner and a saint. “My soul among souls,/an endless field of souls, lilies, arrayed in many colors…”

New Chicago is the psalm chant, the gut howl, the trumpet blast of each “soul behind the skin.” It is “all manner of thing.” It is Brother Suffering “hugged to my chest because what else?”

Patrick T. Reardon, a Chicago Tribune reporter from 1976 to 2009, is the author of seven poetry collections. His latest, Every Marred Thing: A Time in America, was the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize. He is a six-time nominee in poetry for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Mud” was one of the winners of the 2026 Lost Penny Press Broadside Competition. Reardon’s poetry has appeared in America, RHINO, Commonweal, Long Poem, Blue Unicorn, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal and other journals. His website: patricktreardon.com