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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

ARTICLES

The Melting Pot, Vegetable Soup, and the Martini Cocktail: Competing Explanations of U.S. Cultural Pluralism

From the Dust Bowl to California: The Beautiful Fraud

Traveling Through the Dark: The Wilderness Surrealism of the Far West

There's No Place Like Home: The Midwest in American Film Musicals

Modernism and Region: Illinois Poetry and the Modern

Beyond the Love Triangle: Trios in The Awakening

POEMS

Poetic Neurosis

Buffalo Jump

Outside Of Town

Just Before Dawn

Interrupted By The Hardness of Things

Teacup Poetr

Awards

Sometimes You Have To Take Matters Into Your Own Hands

Neighbor

Philosophy

Shadows Of Moremi

July Wind

Doves And Horses

A: "Aesthetic": as Collage

REVIEWS

Mark Sanders; Before We Lost Our Ways

John Wheatcroft; Trio With Four Players

Robert Kane; The Significance of Free Will

Abstract

There is no escaping the mentality--or the burden--of e pluribus unum, writes EDWARD M. GRIFFIN, whether there is a oneness or a plural character to being an American or another notion entirely of what kind of people our multicultural backgrounds have fashioned. Whether national policy or educational philosophy, this concept, these concepts, must be confronted. Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, Griffin has written widely on such colonial figures as Jonathan Edwards and Charles Chauncy, and he has recently turned his attention to the American poet/playwrights Robert Lowell and William Alfred.

JESSICA B. TEISCH examines the story of John Steinbeck's Joads and other fictional Dust Bowl refugees against the real land occupiers of both the Great Plains and California and finds them today, much as they were then, living in a borrowed paradise. This essay draws on Teisch's academic Studies--Brown (English and American literature) and the University of California, Berkeley (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management)-- as well as upon her employment in private and governmental land conservation organizations. She is also now a California resident.

The journey to understanding has many roads and many travelers. In the case of the Sixties' surrealism associated with the American west, WILLIAM YOUNG looks at the writings of Gregory Corso, Richard Hugo, and William Stafford, along with glimpses of several others, in order to discover their destination and the way they chose to reach that better place. A doctoral candidate in English at the University of Arizona, he has published an interview with William Stafford and stories, poems, and essays in a variety of journals.

K. H. BARRON is self-employed and lives and writes in the flint hills near Alma, Kansas. This is her first published poem.

ADAM BROOKE DA VIS, Kirksville, Missouri, has published scholarship, criticism, poetry, fiction, and translations in America and Europe. Specializing in medieval and oral-traditional literature, he teaches these subjects as well as linguistics and writing at Truman State University. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Cape Rock, Northeast, and Roanoke Review.

CHRISTINE DELEA has published poems in Long Island Quarterly, Negative Capability, Potato Eyes, and other journals, and in Prairie Volcano: An Anthology of North Dakota Writers. In 1993, she won an Academy of American Poets Award. She currently lives in Tualatin, Oregon, and teaches at Lewis and Clark College and Clark College.

TWYLA HANSEN, Lincoln, Nebraska, horticulturalist and arboretum curator at Nebraska Wesleyan University, has published two books of poems, How to Live in the Heartland (1992) and In Our Very Bones (1997). Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Kansas Quarterly, The Laurel Review, and Leaning into the Wind (Houghton Mifflin, 1997). Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

STEVE KIRCHOFF lives with his family in a small town in the West.

ERROL MILLER, Monroe, Louisiana, has published poems in American Poetry Review, Seattle Review, Re:Al, and others. He has published a chapbook, The Downtown Diner, and two books are forthcoming, Forever Beyond Us and Downward Glide. His work has appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

RICARDO PAU-LLOSA has published four books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in numerous journals, including American Poetry, Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, and Kenyon Review. He lives in Miami, Florida, and teaches at Miami-Dade Community College, Kendall Campus.

LINDA ROTH lives and writes in Cherry Valley, Illinois.

TOM SEXTON lives and writes in Anchorage, Alaska.

KATHLEEN SPIVACK, Watertown, Massachusetts, is Professor of American Literature and Creative Writing at the Sorbonne, the University of Paris VII & VIII, and Ecole Superieur. Her poems have appeared in more than 300 magazines and anthologies, and she has published five books of poems, one of which, The Beds We Lie In (1986), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

SUSAN TERRIS's most recent book is Nell's Quilt (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1996). Her poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Poetry Northwest, Spoon River Poetry Review, and many other journals. She lives in San Francisco, California. Her work has appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

SUSAN THOMAS has published poetry in Hudson Review, Wind, Poetry Motel, and other journals. She lives in Marshfield, Vermont.

FILEMAN WAITTS teaches high school in Los Angeles, California. His poems have appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Poetry East, and Fine Madness.

STEVE WILSON lives and writes in San Marcos, Texas. His work has appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

Using movie musicals featuring the Midwest and prototypical Midwestern values, EDWARD RECCHIA looks at the destination of many generations of Americans and the point of departure for those driven out or drawn out to the two coasts. The heartland was just that, more of the heart than the mind, and as America changed in the 1960s, so did values on the screen, so much so in fact that there no longer seemed any reason to feature the Midwest. Professor of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University, Recchia teaches courses in composition, American cultural history, and film studies. His essays on literary and film topics have appeared internationally. A recent essay, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers: High-Tech Heroes and Electronic Villains in Films of the Computer Age," appeared in Studies in Popular Culture.

Modernist Illinois poetry, DAVID WRIGHT insists, addressed not only the place of the city in one's mind, but also of the prairie, of the rural places in which and out of which the city grew and against which it competed and from which it drew sustenance. A doctoral student at Loyola University in Chicago, Wright is writing a dissertation on postmodern theories of community and their implications for reading several contemporary poets, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Denise Levertov, and Carolyn Forche. His own poems have appeared in various journals, and he teaches at North Park College in Chicago.

ROBERT LEE MAHON discusses the progress of self-awareness Kate Chopin's Edna undergoes in The Awakening and the tragic consequences of that understanding. In the end Edna cannot transcend her self, a situation paralleling that of the author who found she could not write after early critics savaged her novel. Instructor of English at East Central College in Union, Missouri, Mahon has published a long list of essays and poems, as well as a novel, Private Lives.

SAM UMLAND is Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where he teaches film, critical theory, and media studies. He recently co-authored, with Rebecca A. Umland, an article on Nebraska poet Don Welch titled," Though Inland Far We Be': The Poetic Exile of Don Welch," which appeared in The Platte Valley Review. Both also co-authored a book, The Use of Arthurian Legend in Hollywood Film, which Greenwood Press published in 1996.

RICHARD HOLINGER is an English teacher at Marmion Academy in Aurora, Illinois. He has published short fiction in The Madison Review, Witness, and The Iowa Review. This short fiction is part of a large manuscript entitled Chicago Sampler. Professor Holinger also has recent reviews in Crazy Horse.

DONALD WAYNE VINEY is Professor of Philosophy at Pittsburg State University. His most recent articles were published in The History of Philosophy Quarterly, Teaching Philosophy, and Faith and Philosophy. Professor Viney is author of Logic for Nonvulcans and is presently preparing a translation of works by the French philosopher Jules Lequyer entitled The Dialogue of the Predestinate and the Reprobate and Other Writings.

ANNOUNCING THE ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE AND LECTURE

The editors of The Midwest Quarterly invite submission of articles on any literary topic, but preferably on Victorian or Modem British Literature, Literary Criticism, or the Teaching of Literature, to be considered for the annual Emmett Memorial Prize. The winning author will receive an honorarium and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the annual Emmett Memorial Lecture. This award is given in honor of the late Victor J. Emmett, Jr., who was for many years Professor of English at Pittsburg State University and this journal's Editor-in-Chief.

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