I met Jim and Jeff Hagan when Jeff sent me a note with a picture of the Madison Skyway Drive-In Theater. He’d grown up in Madison, and his brother Jim had passed the poem along via their family listserv. Since Jim and Jeff are two of fourteen siblings, that pretty much doubled my existing readership. I was giving a reading that day at Brews + Prose in Cleveland, and they came. I found out they’re both really smart, funny guys, which makes sense because their father was a comic. (He was also an Ohio politician. You can read more about Robert Hagan here.) I’m so glad to have met them! Quite lucky to have this pair of brothers take part in my project and let me share their voices.
Jim Hagan once won the William Redding Poetry Prize awarded by Larry's Tavern in Columbus Ohio, a long running venue for local poets. He has had poems and essays published in The Plain Dealer, Penguin Review, Ploughshares, and Heartlands: A Magazine of Midwest Art and Writing.
Skyway artifacts. Photos by Jeff Hagan
Jeff Hagan is a writer and editor who grew up in Madison, Ohio and, with his next-oldest-sister, inappropriately accompanied an older brother and his date to see Goodbye, Columbus at a very early age at the Madison Skyway. He told me, “When (Jim) sent the Skyway poem to our family listserv it reached me pretty quickly, having traipsed in the same ruins (though I was also looking for something additional—my own memory).”
(Image from drive-ins.com) Some of the lyrics in the poem came from this ad for Skyway.
A photo I took of the Skyway movie screen circa July 2008, before it was demolished.
Another photo I took in 2008.
(Image from drive-ins.com) Another ad for Skyway.
Photo by Jeff Hagan
(Want to read along? You can order a copy of Local Extinctions here or here or here or from your local independent bookstore, such as Mac's Backs in Cleveland.)
