The Midwest Quarterly; Vol 1. No. 4

Authors

Judy Bounds Coleman
R. D. Lakin
Preston Slosson
Rebecca Patterson
David G. Barry
Lewis Turco
Charles Burgess
Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

Prose

Charles Ives: The Man and His Songs

Unity and Strife in Yeats' Tower Symbol

Dictatorship in Modern Fiction

Two Portraits of a Lady

The Darwinism Synthesis

Poems

A Hollow Rush

Garden with Cat and Guitar

Green Space

Abstract

in this issue...

WITH this number, THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY rounds out Volume I and in effect reaches a kind of maturity. Like the April issue, this fourth number moves our horizons further out by broadening the scope of material published. Once more the editors are able to offer a fairly wide variety of intellectual fare for our discerning readers. While the April issue saw us embark for the first time on the wine-dark sea of verse, this issue carries us further with contributions from two poets who write in the modem mood. And, manuscripts already in hand indicate, we can confidently promise to continue along the lines already charted: THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY will continue to bring its readers readable discussions of an increasingly broad variety of subjects.

AMERICAN MUSIC is a rather special subject to the extent that, while many Americans think they know a lot about it, a great deal of work needs to be done before what Americans know about their music is very soundly based in fact. The lead article in this issue concerns itself with an American composer of tremendous significance whose very name is hardly known to the majority of his countrymen. To her discussion of Charles Ives, JUDY BOUNDS COLEMAN brings an inquiring intellect and highly developed musical ability. The result is a unique analysis of a musician and his music from the point of view of a singer of his songs.

Judy Coleman took the bachelor of music, master of music, and master of music education degrees at the University of Oklahoma and was a pupil of Madame Eva Turner of London. In 1951 she won a scholarship to the Kathryn Turny School of the Metropolitan Opera and enjoyed a year of study in New York. She came to Kansas State College of Pittsburg in the spring of 1954 where she taught voice until June of 1959; during the last academic year she has been Visiting Professor of Voice at the University of Oklahoma. This summer she goes abroad for a year of study at the Royal Academy of Music in, London under Madame Turner. As her article indicates, she has long been interested in Charles Ives and has corresponded with him and his widow. Among her prized possessions is a copy of his privately printed 114 Songs.

CHARLES BURGESS, whose two poems, "Garden with Cat and Guitar" and "Green Space," appear in this issue of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY, has been a member of the Language and Literature Department of Kansas State College of Pittsburg since 1956, teaching contemporary literature, creative writing, and poetry courses. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, Mr. Burgess engaged in further work at Middlebury College (Bread Loaf School of English) and Columbia University. His poems have been published in a number of magazines most recently The New Yorker. When four of his poems appeared in Rolfe Humphries' New Poems By American Poets II, Dudley Fitts noted his work and commented in The New York Times, "this is rare refreshment indeed." This summer Mr. Burgess is in residence at Yaddo, the artists' colony established at Saratoga Springs, New York, through the philanthropy of George Peabody and the Spencer Trasks. He is working on a collection of verse.

POETIC SYMBOLISM has long been a fascinating subject for literate men and women, particularly for students of poetry and the other humanities. R. D. LAKIN holds the bachelor of arts degree (magna cum laude) from Colorado College where he majored in philosophy and literature. From the University of Illinois he received his master of arts degree with a major in philosophy and a minor in history; while there he was a fellow in philosophy. He is currently working ahead on his doctoral program in the field of aesthetics. He came to Kansas State College of Pittsburg in the fall of 1959 as an instructor in the Department of Language and Literature.

While Mr. Lakin confesses to having many varied interests, his major interest is in all phases of the creation and criticism of art, especially literature, an interest which requires wide familiarity with aesthetics, literature and art, and the history of ideas. This goes far to explain his somewhat unorthodox academic background as well as his particular interest in the poetry of William Butler Yeats whose tower symbol he analyzes in the second article in this issue.

ATTRACTED BY and "very pleased to note" the announcement in THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY for January that we were about to begin publishing poetry was one LEWIS TURCO of Iowa City, Iowa, where he is a graduate student at the state university. He completed his undergraduate preparation at the University of Connecticut in 1959. While new to this journal, Mr. Turco is hardly an unknown among American poets. His first collection, First Poems, is a Book Club for Poetry selection and was published only last month. A second manuscript of his, Raceway and Other Poems, was recently recorded for the American Poets Collection for the Library of Congress. Mr. Turco's verse has been published or is forthcoming in such well-known media of modern poetry as the Beloit Poetry Journal, The Carleton Miscellany, The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, and The Sewanee Review. He was also represented in New Campus Writing #3. The editors of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY are happy to include "A Hollow Rush" in this issue.

THE PHENOMENON OF DICTATORSHIP has engaged the attention of students of human behavior for a long time, but few analyses of the fictional treatment of the subject have appeared, notwithstanding the fact that many writers have directed their attention toward it. PRESTON SLOSSON brings to his discussion of dictatorships in modern fiction, particularly in the writings of H. G. Wells, a long lifetime of historical study and practice. A native of Wyoming and the son of a famous Kansas-born chemist, he began his professional career as a member of the United States Department of State, gathering material for the Paris Peace Conference, subsequent to the completion of his Ph. D. at Columbia University in 1916. At the conclusion of World War I he was appointed a member of the staff of the American Commission to Negotiate the Peace. After a year as literary editor of the New York Independent, he began a long teaching career as instructor in history at the University of Michigan where he is currently professor. In addition to Carnegie Visiting Professorships in various British and Scottish universities, he has published more than a dozen· significant books, best known among which are The Great Crusade and After, Europe Since 1870, and The Growth of European Civilization.

During the past spring semester Professor Slosson has been a member of the Department of History, Government, and Philosophy at Kansas State University at Manhattan as part of a new program under which a distinguished scholar will be brought to Kansas State each semester; his appointment crowns sustained efforts in the College of Arts and Sciences to provide outstanding educational experiences for Kansas State University students. His article appearing in this issue of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY was originally prepared as a paper to be read at the annual meeting of the Kansas Association of Teachers of History and Social Science in El Dorado last April. Professor Slosson is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and has long been active in the American Historical Association.

THE FOURTH ARTICLE in the current issue, "Two Portraits of a Lady," offers a somewhat unorthodox interpretation of two novels by Henry James. Our contributor, REBECCA PATTERSON, is a member of the editorial board of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY and professor of American literature at Kansas State College of Pittsburg. Dr. Patterson took her A. B., A. M., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Texas and taught English at the Universities of Texas, Stanford, and North Carolina before coming to Pittsburg six years ago. She is the author of a biography of Emily Dickinson published in 1951 by Houghton Mifflin, and of numerous articles on American literary figures. While she was working on her study of Emily Dickinson, Dr. Patterson held an A. A. U. W. Fellowship and the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship for 1950.

READERS OF OUR APRIL ISSUE will recall the lead article, "The Mosaic Heritage of Charles Darwin" by DAVID G. BARRY, Chairman of the Department of Biological Science at Kansas State College of Pittsburg. In this issue, Professor Barry concludes his discerning analysis of the intellectual background of Darwin's great Origin of Species in "The Darwinian Synthesis." It should be noted that since his last appearance in our pages, Dr. Barry has been promoted to the rank of professor of biology.

Recommended Citation

Coleman, Judy Bounds; Lakin, R. D.; Slosson, Preston; Patterson, Rebecca; Barry, David G.; Turco, Lewis; Burgess, Charles; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1960) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol 1. No. 4," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 1: Iss. 4, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol1/iss4/1