I’m strolling through Washington Park when he walks up to me. I try to dodge him, but he’s persistent.
My smile is all he needs to start reciting other poems–a verse about his rage, a phrase about his crack addiction, words about love. You can’t get a word in once he’s onstage.
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He flashes a gap-toothed grin, basking in his words. I had planned to buy one poem for $1, but ended up with six lavishly illustrated poems by Virgil, the wandering poet.
Virgil says he’s been fascinated by words ever since his older sister taught him how to read when he was six years old. Now, at 44, he likes Robert Ludlum for “lighter” reading and anything on sociology, philosophy, and history. “I always loved reading, just for the sake of knowledge,” he says. “I was a voracious reader, but I didn’t like the imposition on my freedom that school put on me. I felt they were holding me back. I felt like I could learn better on my own. I admired Abraham Lincoln because he was a self-taught scholar.”
“I was meeting a lot of new people, and I saw that life extended beyond Chicago and Kankakee,” he says. Virgil moved to Aurora and lived with his uncle, a landlord and former pro player in the Canadian Football League. “Aurora was primarily a white, Republican community, and my uncle came in buying up buildings. One day, I was in the kitchen and I saw this glow. I looked out the window and there was a cross burning on the lawn. I chased the guys but didn’t catch them. It didn’t make any major impact. It was just some white boys doing what white boys did when they thought they could get away with it.”
“I’m not a poet,” he says. “I’m an aspiring poet. I’ve never gotten into reading poetry and I don’t care for open mikes. I’d rather people buy my poetry and read it themselves. But I do want to know poetry. I want to read Teasdale and Dante. I’m setting a curriculum for myself.”
