The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 39 No. 4

Authors

• Thomas Matchie
• Elvira Bennet
• Stuart Noble-Goodman
• Darren J. N. Middleton
• Kevin Walzer
• Sanford Pinsker
• David Lee
• Jeanne E. Clark
• Susan Ludvigson
• Roland Sodowsky
• Ronald Charles Epstein
• Barbara Lerma
• Joanna Weber
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES

Spiritual Geography in Four Midwestern Novels

Kafka and Girls: The Case of Leni

Mythic Guilt and the Burden of Sin in Ellison's Invisible Man

Apophatic Boldness: Kazantzakis's Use of Negation and Silence to Emphasize Theological Mystery

Poetical Correctness: James Wright's Formal Practices

Can Writing Be Too Clear?

POEMS

Slow

Going Back Home

My Name is Quinn Margaret

The Game Joe Silver Plays Alone and in the Dark

At Duke University Medical Center

Returning

At the Center

Cleaning Fish

Sunday Duet

REVIEWS

John Oughton; Counting Out the Millenium

Nicholas Wright; Mrs. Klein

John M. Dunaway and Eric O. Springstead, editors; The Beauty That Saves: Essays on Aesthestics and Lanuage in Simone Weil

Abstract

THOMAS MATCHIE explores a spirituality rooted in goodness, an affirmation of faith and community across the fissures which sometimes separate us, not one expressed in cults, cant, and combat boots, as revealed in four novels set in the Midwest. Professor of English at North Dakota State University in Fargo, Matchie teaches American literature, including midwestem and multicultural authors. He has published numerous articles on the Great Plains, including works by Louise Erdrich, Thomas McGrath, and Lois Hudson. Interested in political issues, he has also served in the North Dakota Senate.

ELVIRA BENNET finds Franz Kafka equally conflicted when confronting women or power, and indeed envisioned a utopian community that was ascetic, joyless, and without women, "for the present, at least." Using Kafka's character Leni, Bennet examines Kafka's tortured feelings toward women, a race who promised punishment and redemption, despair and hope. An archivist by profession, Bennet has published poems and fiction in a variety of journals. This is her first published essay.

STUART NOBLE-GOODMAN discusses the myths Ralph Ellison deals with in his Invisible Man, the myths which imprison both whites and blacks, prevent them from understanding each other, even from approaching each other, and why invisibility allows the narrator to reveal the necessity of diversity for a truly democratic society. Director of Graduate Teaching Programs at North Carolina State University, Noble-Goodman has recently completed articles on Robinson Jeffers and Hart Crane's use of science in The Bridge, and is working on a book-length study on the influence of modem physics on modernist poetry.

Guest poetry editor for this issue is LAURA LEE WASHBURN. Washburn recently joined the English Department faculty at Pittsburg State University. She teaches poetry writing and literature. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and taught previously at Southwest Missouri State University. Her chapbook, Watching the Contortionists, was published by Palanquin Press in 1997. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Yellow Silk, Quarterly West, Carolina Quarterly, Nebraska Review, and others. Three of her poems appeared in the Spring 1998 issue of The Midwest Quarterly. In 1996 she won first prize in the John Williams Andrews Narrative Poetry contest and in the Palanquin Chapbook Contest. More recently, her work has been highly ranked in the Annual Tennessee Chapbook Prize, the William Blake Prize, the Snake Nation Press Poetry Book Contest, and the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Washburn is a former editor of Dominion Review and Type. While at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Washburn served as director of the Moon City Reading Series.

JEANNE E. CLARK, Tempe, Arizona, has published in Quarterly West, Willow Springs, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. After growing up in northwest Ohio, she spent several years working at a maximum security criminal psychiatric institution. Her poetry manuscript, Ohio Blue Tips, won the 1997 Akron Poetry Prize and will appear in Spring of 1999.

SUSAN LUDVIGSON teaches at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. She is the author of more than five books of poetry. Two of her most recent collections are Everything Winged Must Be Dreaming (LSU Press, 1993) and Trinity (LSU Press, 1996). She has received a Writer's Fulbright fellowship to Yugoslavia, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

ROLAND SODOWSKY was raised on a homestead in the Gloss Mountain area of western Oklahoma. Things We Lose (University of Missouri Press, 1989), the 1989 AWP Award winner, and Interim in the Desert (TCU Press, 1990) are among his books of fiction. He teaches at Southwest Missouri State University. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

DAVID LEE's books of poetry include My Town (Copper Canyon, 1995), The Porcine Canticles (Copper Canyon, 1984), and Day's Work (Copper Canyon, 1990). He heads the English Department at Southern Utah University, and serves on the editorial board of Weber Studies.

DARREN J. N. MIDDLETON shows how Nikos Kazantzakis uses apophatic mystery (saying what God is not), rather than cataphatic revelation (saying what God is), to illuminate the actuality of God. Further the author links this mode to theological trends in both classical Eastern Orthodoxy and Christian postmodern theology. Now teaching religion and culture at Texas Christian University, Middleton co-edited God's Struggler: Religion in the Writings of Nikos Kazantzakis and has a new book, Novel Theology: Kazantzakis' Encounter with Whitchcadian Process Theism, both from Mercer University Press, appearing later this year.

KEVIN WALZER provides an alternative perspective on the current war between practitioners of free and traditional verse. He has chosen the writings of James Wright to demonstrate how such a colloquy could be enlightening when, all too often, it has degenerated to words delivered, as Mike Tyson might say, with bad intentions. Co-editor of The Wilderness of Vision: On the Poetry of John Haines and author of a book of poems, Living in Cincinnati, Walzer has had essays published in a number of journals.

SANFORD PINSKER blames the practitioners of modem critical studies of literature of cultivating unclarity and of consciously obfuscating the understanding they profess to seek. This essay was delivered originally as an Emmett Lecture, which accompanies an annual prize recognizing the best essay published in this journal on literature. Now Shadek Humanities Professor at Franklin and Marshall College, Pinsker has published more than a dozen books on literary topics, including the Yiddish and American-Jewish novel, Philip Roth, Joseph Conrad, Joseph Heller, Cynthia Ozick, and J. D. Salinger, and several volumes of poetry as well. His most recent book is Worrying About Race, 1985-1995: Reflections During a Troubled Time. He has had several previous essays published in Midwest Quarterly.

RONALD CHARLES EPSTEIN is a Canadian freelance writer whose book reviews have appeared in the Canadian Book Review Annual, The Texas Review and The Antigonish Review. His verse has appeared in Orbis, White Wall Review, and The Piedmont Literary Review.

BARBARA LERMA, a Kansas writer and master's degree candidate at Emporia State University, is currently working on an anthology, New Western Poetry of Kansas. She has published in psychological journals and is on the editorial board of The Woodley Press, Washburn University.

JOANNA WEBER is an assistant curator in the Department of European and Contemporary Art, Yale University Art Gallery.

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE FIFTH ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE

On behalf of the family of the later Professor Victor J. Emmett, Jr., the faculty of the English Department and the editors of The Midwest Quarterly are happy to announce the winner of the 1998 Emmett Memorial Prize:

Professor Tom Matchie of University of North Dakota for his essay, "Spiritual Geography in Four Midwestern Novels," which appears in this issue of The Midwest Quarterly.

Professor Matchie will receive an honorarium provided by an endowment set up by the Emmett family and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the Emmett Memorial Lecture during September,1998.

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 by the Emmett family in memory 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.

Recommended Citation

Matchie, Thomas; Bennet, Elvira; Noble-Goodman, Stuart; Middleton, Darren J. N.; Walzer, Kevin; Pinsker, Sanford; Lee, David; Clark, Jeanne E.; Ludvigson, Susan; Sodowsky, Roland; Epstein, Ronald Charles; Lerma, Barbara; Weber, Joanna; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1998) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 39 No. 4," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 39: Iss. 4, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol39/iss4/1