•  
  •  
 

The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

ARTICLES 

Socrates and Chevrolets, Kierkegaard and Evaluations, Zen and Blackboards 

Motive Hunting 

Canvas and Steam: Historical Conflict in Jack London's Sea-Wolf 

"Buddha Writing": The Author and the Search for Authenticity in Jack Kerouac's On the Road and The Subterraneans 

The "Iceman" Cometh: Diderot, Herder, and D. H. Lawrence View the African Ideal 

Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and The Anxiety of Influence  

POEMS 

party game 

Dust: 

Stones  

Found Sonnet: Benjamin Eakins' Recipe For Ink 

The Great Basin Moves Through A Porous Attention 

Feeder 

Christmas Eve, Shawnee, Ohio 

The Opposite Of Suffering Is Space 

Small Enough to Hold 

The Skink 

Inventory 

Meditation With Barbecue 

November and the Winds are Coming From Canada 

Gardeners, or Not 

Sign Language  

Transylvanian Spring, May 1995 

REVIEWS 

Jay Fultz; In Search of Donna Reed 

Marnie Jones; Holy Toledo: Religion and Politics in the Life of "Golden Rule" Jones  

Jerry Lembcke; The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam 

Edward Locke; Names for the Self 

Philip J. Williams and Kurt Walter; Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador's Transition to Democracy  

Abstract

ROBERT WEXELBLATT explores the art of teaching by considering both the ideal and its impact and appreciation by its recipients and those who would exercise authority over teachers. He reaches the uneasy conclusion that true teaching is a precarious balance, less a golden mean in delivery but in outcome, the sum of extremes. Award-winning author of essays and books of fiction, Wexelblatt is a Professor of Humanities at Boston University's College of General Studies. His numerous essays in this journal testify that he is, above all else, a teacher.

MANFRED WEIDHORN traces the concept of motive--Can we know those affecting our own actions? Can others know them? Are some motives privileged or hidden, even from ourselves, at the time of action?--from the 18th to the 20th centuries by examining the subject in a diverse collection of writers. The Abraham and Irene Guterman Professor of English Literature at Yeshiva University, Weidhorn has published two books on 17th-century English literature, four on Winston Churchill, three biographies for young adults, and a psychological self-help book, as well as over seventy articles in such journals as Harvard Theological Review, Shakespeare Quarterly, Milton Quarterly, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Midwest Quarterly.

JAMES A. PAPA, JR., argues that Jack London's Sea-Wolf was less about idealism versus Social Darwinism than the victory of rationalism and capitalism, symbolized by the steamship Macedonia captained by Death Larsen, over the passion and intellectualism of the earlier age, symbolized by the sail-powered Ghost, a sealing schooner under the command of Wolf Larsen. Assistant Professor of English at York College of the City University of New York, Papa includes among his most recent publications "The Politics of Leisure: Industrial Tourism in Edward Abbey's Desert Solitarie," which appeared in Coyote in the Maze: Tracking Edward Abbey in a World of Words (University of Utah Press, 1998), edited by Peter Quigley, and an essay on Thoreau in the last issue of The Midwest Quarterly. He has an essay on natural history entitled "Death on the Wing" forthcoming in ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment).

MICHELE BOWMAN, Greensboro, North Carolina, has published poetry

in The Greensboro Review, Mañana, and Borderlands. Her articles

and stories have appeared in Texas Monthly, The American Journal of

Criminal Law, and Number One.

RICK CANNON has published poetry in Amelia, The Iowa Review, Nimrod, and numerous other journals. On three occasions his work has received significant recognition, including in 1995 an Individual Artist's Award and Grant in Poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council. He teaches at Gonzaga College and at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. His poetry has appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

CRAIG CHALLENDER has recently published poems in Connecticut Review and English Journal. He has published one book of poems, Familiar Things, and has a chapbook, Fathers and Waters, forthcoming soon from Holocene Press. He lives in Farmville, Virginia. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

PHILIP DACEYs most recent chapbook is What's Empty and Weighs the Most: 24 Sonnets (Black Dirt Press, 1997). His sixth full-length collection, The Deathbed Playboy, is forthcoming in 1999 from Eastern Washington University Press. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly. He lives in Lynd, Minnesota.

NICKIE J. GUNSTORM, Reno, Nevada, has published poems recently in Borderlands and The Dickinson Review. Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

WILLIAM KLOEFKORN has two new books appearing soon, Fielding Imaginary Grounders and Welcome to Carlos. His poems have appeared recently in Harper's, Puerto del Sol, Prairie Schooner, and The Laurel Review. He continues to live and write in Lincoln, Nebraska. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

KIP KNOTT currently lives and writes in Stillwater, Oklahoma. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

DEBORAH LANDAU, Los Angeles, California, has published poems recently in Painted Bride Quarterly, Salamander, and Mudfish.

MARTIN OTT, Los Angeles, California, has published work recently in Quality Paperback Literary Review, Seattle Review, and the Southern California Anthology. His poems have appeared in previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

DAVID L. ROBERTS, former Olympic track and field bronze medalist, is an emergency physician living in Archer, Florida. His poems have appeared recently in Brooklyn Review, Black Dirt, Borderlands, and other journals. He also publishes short fiction.

RANDOLPH THOMAS, Blacksburg, Virginia, has published poems recently in Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West, Witness, and other journals. He also publishes short fiction.

STEVEN TURLOCK, Fayetteville, Arkansas, has published poems recently in Arkansas Review, Cape Rock, Red Cedar Review, and other journals.

BOB VANCE lives and writes in Petoskey, Michigan.

KEN WALDMAN, Juneau, Alaska, has recent work in Many Mountains Moving, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Flyway . His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

SARA WILLINGHAM, a fine-arts photographer form Concord, New Hampshire, has published poems recently in several journals, including Poetry East, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Nimrod.

STEVE WILSON has new work appearing in Re: AL and The Wallace Stevens Journal. His poems were also selected to appear in two recent anthologies, Best Texas Writing 2 and What Have You Lost?, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

STEVE WILSON examines the life and writing of Jack Kerouac to understand the extent to which Kerouac achieved or intended to achieve authenticity in depicting outside experience. A frequent contributor of poetry in the pages of The Midwest Quarterly, including the current issue, Wilson has had scholarly work in such publications as The Dictionary of Literary Biography, CEA Critic, and Thought & Action. He is Associate Professor of English at Southwest Texas State University. He counts the kiss Beat poet Allen Ginsberg planted on his cheek after a night of poetry reading as one of his most memorable moments.

ARTHUR SCHERR shows that the late 20th-century view of the separate superiority of black-skinned Africans to ice-bound white Europeans had its champions among whites as diverse as Johann Gottfried von Herder, Denis Diderot, and D. H. Lawrence. Author of essays published recently in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and Mid-America: An Historical Review, as well as The Midwest Quarterly, Scherr teaches history and geography at Bronx Community College.

RON KLIER makes a convincing case that Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan are great poets in the tradition of Walt Whitman, that is as singers of democracy, of the extraordinary ordinary Americans. Klier lives and writes in Los Angeles where he works for the Kaplan-Stahler Literary Agency. This is his first published scholarly essay.

CHARLES CAGLE, an award-winning creative writer, is Professor of English at Pittsburg State University. In the broader Pittsburg community, he played an active role in the Stilwell Hotel restoration project. His lecture on the life of Arthur Stilwell was printed and used to raise funds for the project.

KEITH McCOY teaches political science in the Department of Social Science at Pittsburg State University. His teaching responsibilities include a course on state and local government.

HARRY L. HUMPHRIES, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Pittsburg State University, spent the 1994-95 academic year in Russia as a Fulbright Fellow at Kazan State University. He is co-author of Sociology: Relationships That Make a World (Kendall/Hunt, 1998).

RONALD CHARLES EPSTEIN, a Canadian freelance writer whose reviews and verse have appeared in numerous publications, lived in Tel Aviv in 1972 and 1981, has visited the city many times since, and alludes to it in his review. Much closer to his home in Toronto, he recently visited the tenth annual Eden Mills Writer's Festival in which several veteran Canadian writers participated.

PAUL W. ZAGORSKI is author of Democracy versus National Security: Civil-Military Relations in Latin American (Lynne Rienner, 1992), as well as articles on Latin American and the Latin American military. He has been at Pittsburg State University since 1975, where he is Professor of Political Science.

Permissions to Use

In accordance with database agreements, the full text of the issue is not available for download. Pittsburg State Digital Commons has only provided the front matter for author and publication information.

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.