By Lenore Macdonald
Chicago boasts a heady, almost superpower, status when it comes to its legendary poets: Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and so many more.
We need to add Benjamin Goluboff to the list.
Ben was born and raised in Philadelphia, graduated from New York University Phi Beta Kappa, where he majored in Classics, then switched gears and earned his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in English. Lake Forest College wisely hired Ben right out of Penn in 1986. He has been in its English and Creative Writing Department, specializing in American Literature, ever since, having been awarded Lake Forest College’s coveted Great Teacher Award for his popular courses in American Environmental Literature, Emily Dickinson, Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Literature of the Viet Nam War.
His dissertation topic is absolutely fascinating: nineteenth century travel writing–an understudied field in the 1980s. Since then, he has published numerous academic papers and—most important for today’s Five Questions—creative works too numerous to list here. (for a list, see, “Creative Work” tab at https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/faculty/goluboff/)
Ben came to poetry later in his career, in 2012. He writes, among other things, speculative biographical poetry. This is narrative poetry that explores the lives of real people through a speculative lens: imaginary meetings occur, and juxtapositions that cannot be verified in the historical record. This kind of writing blends biographical details with fantastical or impossible scenarios, creating unique portraits that delve into the “what ifs” of a person’s life. Ben was ahead of the curve on this because it was not a recognized genre when he started penning his unique poetry.
When I heard about Ben’s latest tome, co-authored with Massachusetts poet Mark Luebbers, I was especially intrigued. Group Portrait: Poems on a Photograph by Hermann Landshoff appealed to my love of art, of historical moments, and of the written word. As most of our readers know, in 1942 Landshoff snapped three portraits of exiled artists and intellectuals, most refugees (like Landshoff) from Hitler’s Europe. Landshoff’s photo session took place at Peggy Guggenheim’s home perhaps as an advertisement for her newly opened gallery, Art of This Century.
Cover of Group Portrait: Poems on a Photograph by Hermann Landshoff by Mark Luebbers and Benjamin Goluboff. The book, from cover-to-cover, is a complete work of art in and of itself. Image courtesy of the publisher.
Group Portrait is a complete work of art, both literarily and visually, from cover to cover. I found some parts very funny. I did not expect to find parts of it so visually compelling, but indeed I did.
Ben’s 2019 tome, Biking Englewood: An Essay on White Gaze. Image courtesy of the publisher
So how on earth did Lake Forest College’s Ben find himself collaborating on a book of poetry with Mark Luebbers, who was working in the remote Berkshires? Simple. Because they both had work appearing in the now defunct Chicago litmag, Bird’s Thumb, Luebbers reached out to Ben, never having met him, and asked Ben if he would like to collaborate on some poems. Both were writing speculative biography poetry, thus, to turn a phrase, the start of a beautiful collaboration. Importantly, Ben explained to me that he found that “you write more when you’re accountable to another writer,” and finds their process to be “very good for productivity.”
Here are my five questions for Ben (I did, however, want to ask him about fifteen more):
1.Why write a book of poetry about this image? What inspired you and Mark?
I found the Landshoff photo in a biography of Peggy Guggenheim and saw right away it would be good for the kind of speculative biographical writing that Mark and I do – making up stuff about historical people. All these distinguished names in one frame. All these cool stories. Big canonical modernist figures right at the moment when modernism was going from avant-garde to high culture – the photo seemed a very ripe opportunity.
2. How did you and Mark go about writing the poems? Did you split up the names? Collaborate on all? A little bit of both?
We work using one shared assumption and one operating principle. The shared assumption is we’re not trying to produce one particular voice but to create lots of different voices. It’s not Mark trying to sound like Ben or Ben trying to sound like Mark; it’s the two of us inventing multiple voices. The operating principle is that the guy who starts a poem gets to finish it, gets the last editorial word. It’s an incentive for each of us to invent poems and it’s a way of knowing when we’re done with a poem.
3. Landshoff shot several photos of the group during the session. Why did you and Mark select this particular image? Why not one of the others?
This is the one of the series that the National Portrait Gallery has up on its website, the one they gave us permission to use.
4. What do you see as the ramifications/effects of this photograph 73 years later?
The people in the photograph were refugees from an authoritarian power that demonized outsiders and tried to silence the arts. It’s all very pertinent to our own terrible moment.
5. What is next for you? Poetry? Novel? Lecturing? Taking it easy and resting on your laurels?
Back to another semester of teaching. Standing in for a colleague who teaches our Ancient and Medieval Literature survey course, so I’ve been reading Virgil and Ovid and Dante this summer. I’m giving a reading at Lake Forest Public Library on October 20, 2025. And I’ve got a new book of poetry coming out this fall. Moe Asch: A Speculative Life in Verse.
Group Portrait is available on Amazon and at local bookshops. It just might be the least expensive work of art that you ever acquired–and well worth your time.
Ben will be reading selections from Group Portrait at the Lake Forest Public Library on Monday, October 20, 2025
Ben also leads book discussions (via Zoom) at the Northbrook Public Library. Why not try one and give the little gray cells some exercise? They are reading Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler on Wednesday, September 10th at 10:30 (Zoom). I’ll be there. Hope to see you, too. Click here for more information and to register for the September 10th book discussion.
©2025 Lenore Macdonald. All rights reserved.
