The Green Mill

This guide to the Green Mill, a century-old jazz lounge in Chicago, follows a slow Sunday night in 1986 when construction worker and poet Marc Smith set out to change how poetry readings usually went. It traces his frustration with polite, sleepy readings, his pitch to owner Dave Jemilo to fill the club's dead Sunday nights, and his plan to pull judges straight from the crowd. Best heard while looking at the small stage where that first random jury climbed up.