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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

ARTICLES

Liberal Education and Practical Wisdom

Bridge Over Broken Glass: Crisscrossing History in Germany's Sole Jewish High School

The Abyss and History: The Children and the Holocaust

Gnawing at History: The Rhetoric of Holocaust Denial

The Peculiar Case of the Hebrew Bible

17 Heriot Row: Where the Child's Garden Grew

POEMS

Spring Smoke

Winn's Russett

Little Things

The Poem I Might Write For You Some Day

Kite Flying In The Pyrenees

The Course Of Things

Elegy

Good Medicine

After The Reading The Color ls Blue

Walking The Little Walnut, Late January

Losing Wilderness

An Almanac of Lunar Eclipses

Less And Less The Day's Happenstance

Beat The Drum

Conspirations

REVIEWS

David Marc; Bonfire of the Humanities: Television Subliteracy, and Long-Term Memory Loss

Charles Edward Eaton; The Fox and I

Abstract

JOHN CHURCHILL argues that only by providing "exemplars—cases of fit and base behavior in history, fiction, and other fields, narratives of situations and problem-confrontation in which the possible challenges of human life are exhibited and some possible resolutions held up for consideration," can those who would learn deliberate upon and apply abstract principles, and that this is the essence of a liberal education. Along the way Churchill confronts the issue of what is meant by rational argumentation. Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of the College, at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, Churchill sums up his many publications, including two previously in The Midwest Quarterly, as those of one who works in the philosophy of religion, with special reference to the work of Wittgenstein, and in the philosophy of education and culture, and that the particular interest that runs through all these fields is the question whether and in what way it can make sense to seek commonalities among disparate ways of conceiving practices and their aims.

D. S. BUTTERWORTH, Spokane, Washington, has published poetry in Willow Springs, The Seattle Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Portland Review, Poet Lore, and other journals. His non-fiction book, Waiting for Rain (1992), was published by Algonquin Books.

RACHEL DACUS has published poetry in Bellowing Ark, Blue Unicorn, Comstock Review, Poet Lore and other journals, as well as the The Poetry of Roses (1995), an anthology of rose photographs and poetry. Bellowing Ark Society will publish her book, Earth Lessons, in 1998. She lives in Walnut Creek, California.

DANIEL GUTSTEIN's poetry has appeared previously in the G. W. Review. He earned his M. F. A. at the University of Michigan, and has taught at Michigan and George Washington University. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

JEFF HALBERT received his M. F. A. at San Diego State University, and has published poems in Southern Poetry Review, Maryland Poetry, G. W. Review, and other journals. He is an assistant editor of Poetry International, and lives in Lothian, Maryland.

JOHN KENNEDY, Branford, Connecticut, has published poems recently in The Seattle Review, College English, and The Christian Science Monitor. His poem, "Transformations," which appeared in the Winter 1996 issue of The Midwest Quarterly, was selected to appear in the 1995/ 1996 Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry (Monitor Press).

WILLIAM KLOEFKORN's latest book, Treehouse: New & Selected Poems (1996), was published by White Pine Press. He lives, writes, and teaches in Lincoln, Nebraska. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

LYN LIFSHIN has published several poems in The Midwest Quarterly. Her next collection of poems, Cold Comfort, is being published by Black Sparrow Press. She lives in Vienna, Virginia.

PETER MARKUS, Detroit, Michigan, recently published a chapbook, Still Lives with Whiskey Bottle (March Street Press, 1996). His poems have appeared in Quarterly West, The Quarterly, and The Prose Poem: An International Anthology, as well as in a previous issue of The Midwest Quarterly.

JANET McCANN has published poetry in numerous journals, including Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou'wester, New York Quarterly, and McCalls. She has won three chapbook competitions, and in 1989 was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. She has also written a scholarly book on Wallace Stevens and a textbook, and she was co-editor (with David Craig) of a poetry anthology, Odd Angles of Heaven (Houghton Mifflin, 1985). She lives in College Station, Texas.

SYLVAN MOE lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and works in various health care professions. His poetry has appeared in The Outpost, Pasque Petals, Peregrine, and After Noon.

RICK PERRY studied poetry writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "Kite Flying in the Pyrenees" is his fourth published poem. He lives in West Allis, Wisconsin.

LINDA ROTH has recently published poetry in several journals, including The James Dickey Newsletter, Kinesis, and Poultry: A Magazine of Voice. She lives in Cherry Valley, Illinois.

YVETTE A. SCHNOEKER-SHORB's poems have appeared in Slant, Blueline, Puerto del Sol and other journals. She works as a G.E.D. instructor and English/Special Needs tutor at Yavapai College. She is also co-publisher of Native West Press and lives in Prescott, Arizona.

TOM SEXTON, Alaska's Poet Laureate, has recently published poems in Amicus Journal, The Hudson Review, Yankee, and Wilderness. He lives in Anchorage.

JIM THOMAS is Professor Emeritus of English at Truman State University. He is living in an old stone house near Hermann, Missouri, only an hour's drive from good trout fishing, and working on a second collection of poems.

JOHN G. RODDEN reports a conversation with a teacher at the newly revived Jewish high school in Berlin, the part formerly behind the Wall, a conversation which begins with the revelation that her father had been an officer in Hitler's SS. From this flows an accounting of the effort, both by the teacher and German society, to confront and supplant the past with an altered future. As Americans face their own history and future, personal and collective, this is a subject worth pondering. Adjunct Professor of Speech Communication at the University of Texas-Austin, Rodden is the author of two books, Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse: A History of East Gennan Education and Textbook Reds: Ideology and National Self-Legitimation in East Gennan Schoolbooks.

ARTHUR A. MOLITIERNO writes of the Holocaust and of its impact on the people who survived it in order to make the point that history matters to the people who experience it and that to those who would understand must not divorce individuals from the events or deconstruct reality from history by processing it into something that has the look and texture of generic bologna. Associate Professor of English at Wright State University, Lake Campus, Molitierno has since 1995 been editor-in-chief of TEXT Technology: The Journal of Computer Text Processing, an academic quarterly devoted to the creation, manipulation, compiling, or editing of texts through the use of computers. His publication interests lie within the subject of intellectual history, with a particular interest in the works of Christopher Lasch and the ongoing debates over the rise of capitalism and its consequences for social development. An essay concerning Lasch's last published book, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, will appear in future in these pages. Molitierno also serves as the Director of Public Relations for the Lake Campus of Wright State University.

JAMES NAJARIAN examines the rhetorical methods of the Holocaust deniers--those who argue that nothing much happened to the Jews in Hitler's Reich and that what did was evidently their own fault--to make their case. Author of recent articles published in Victorian Poetry and Twentieth-Century Literature, Najarian has this fall taken a position as Assistant Professor of English at Boston College.

MORDECAI ROSHWALD discusses the causes and the consequences great and small of ignorance of the Hebrew Bible. Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Minnesota, where he taught for twenty-five years, and a visiting lecturer in universities in Israel, England, Canada, and Taiwan, Roshwald is author of many books of fiction and non-fiction, among them Modern Technology: The Promise and the Menace is the most recent. Soon to appear will be Quo Vadis, America? A Portrait of a Civilization.

ABRAHAM FOX provides an account of a pilgrimage to the house of Robert Louis Stevenson in Edinburgh, Scotland. If the advice that returning home carries soul-wrenching disappointments, how so those who have enjoyed the company of the homeowner, albeit vicariously through the delicious writings of RLS? This memoir connects both the physical, the house itself, and the personal, the couple now resident in the structure, with the author and the community about which he wrote so much. Having served as Catalog Librarian of Columbia University Libraries and the same post for New York Public Library, Fox has most recently published "John D. Macdonald: 'The Case of the Licit Libido'" for JDM Bibliophile.

DAVID D. COOPER is an Associate Professor at Michigan State University, where he teaches undergraduate courses in the Department of American Thought and Language and graduate seminars in the American Studies Program, of which he is currently Acting Director.

WALTER SHEAR, Professor Emeritus in English at Pittsburg State University, who reviews the latest poetry by Charles Edward Eaton, is a specialist in American fiction.

JENNINGS BLACKMON, a long-serving member of Midwest Quarterly's Board of Editors, and DOUG CARMICHAEL, a recent addition to its membership, have both resigned. Dr. Blackmon has, unfortunately, for reasons of health had to retire from his position as a Professor of English. His incisive comments and professionalism will be greatly missed. Dr. Carmichael decided that his other responsibilities were too pressing.

At this time I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. CELIA PATTERSON to the Board of Editors. Dr. Patterson is an Assistant Professor of English at Pittsburg State University. Having earned her Ph.D. from the University of Tulsa in 1990, she teaches literature, technical writing, and women's studies at PSU. She is especially interested in American women's World War I literature (fiction and nonfiction) and in the intersection of ideology and literature.

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