The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 41 No. 2

Authors

• John G. Parks
• Arthur A. Molitierno
• Stephen C. Behrendt
• Greg Smith
• James J. McClintock
• Jennifer Radtke
• David Baker
• Dan Campion
• Tom Hansen
• Margaret Hasse
• Ted Kooser
• Roseann Lloyd
• Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
• Kathleen Norris
• Mark Sanders
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

Articles 

The Comedy of Powerlessness: The One Modern Joke 

The Authentic Negative Voice of Democracy: Christopher Lasch' s Last Will and 

Testament 

New Romanticism for Old: Displacing Our Expectations and Our Models 

"And all the Sinners, Saints": Patti Smith, Pioneer Musician and Poet 

Jim Harrison, Soul-Maker  

Do The Right Thing in Black and White: Spike Lee's Bi-Cultural Method  

POEMS 

Clear Winter Night  

The Scavenger 

Sleeper 

A Place You Never Leave  

January 27th--Thirty-four degrees and clear 

Movement 

Field 

The Independent Bankers 

Plain Sense 

Abstract

Why is there humor in being helpless to counter the forces great (and sometimes small) at work in the world? JOHN G. PARKS traces the idea of the comedy of powerlessness in the works of late twentieth-century writers and concludes that our laughter stirs not from a bitter embrace of this condition but because it is an assertion of free will in the face of those forces. Professor of English at Miami University in Ohio, Parks has, in addition to numerous scholarly articles, published a book on the fiction of E. L. Doctorow. He is currently at work on two full-length projects, one on the writings of Robert Stone and the other on the problem of moral struggle in recent American fiction.

Christopher Lasch found a deadness in the heart of American democracy, a soulless secularism encouraged by capitalism and the elite, as ARTHUR A. MOLITIERNO demonstrates, but never quite managed to explain why democracy deserved to survive or if there were sufficient grounds for optimism about the eventual outcome. Professor of Literature at Wright State University, Molitierno edits the quarterly TEXT Technology: The Journal of Computer Text Processing. He has published two articles previously in The Midwest Quarterly, one on George Simmel and Christopher Lasch and another on Richard Lucas's account of the sufferings and triumphs of Polish Gentile children in the Holocaust.

Rediscovery of women poets and other marginalized writers and a poststructuralist outlook have, as STEPHEN C. BEHRENDT shows, produced a remapping of British Romanticism. The George Holmes Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Behrendt has among his recent publications books on Shelley and His Audiences and Reading William Blake and two collections of poems. He has also coauthored an MLA collection, Royal Death and Regency Mourning: Elegies and Memorials of Princess Charlotte.

DAVID BAKER has published five poetry books, including, most recently, Sweet Home, Saturday Night (1991), After the Reunion (1994), and The Truth about Small Towns (1998), all from Arkansas. Baker has also written two critical books on poetry, Meter in English: A Critical Engagement (Arkansas, 1996), and Line by Line: On Recent Poetry, forthcoming from Arkansas in 2000. His poems and essays have appeared in Antaeus, The Atlantic, DoubleTake, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The Nation, New Republic, New Yorker, Poetry, Tri- Quarterly, Yale Review, and many other journals. Baker is the poetry editor of Kenyon Review. He teaches at Denison University and lives in Granville, Ohio. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

DAN CAMPION has published a chapbook of poetry, Calypso (Syncline Press, 1981). He has also edited one critical book on poetry, Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981, rev. 1998), and published another, Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell Univ. Press, 1995). His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Blue Unicom, College English, Laurel Review, Negative Capability, North Dakota Quarterly, Plains Poetry Journal, Poetry, and numerous other journals. Campion lives in Iowa City, Iowa. His poems have appeared previously in the The Midwest Quarterly.

TOM HANSEN teaches writing and literature at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. His poems, essays, and reviews appear in recent issues of Weber Studies, Nimrod, The Literary Review, National Forum, The Iowa Review, and others. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

MARGARET HASSE's two books of poetry are In a Sheep's Eye, Darling (Milkweed Editions, 1988) and Stars Above, Stars Below (New Rivers Press, 1984). Since 1988, she has been a private consultant to numerous arts organizations and charitable trusts. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

The most recent of TED KOOSER's eight collections of poetry are One World at a Time (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), The Blizzard Voices (Bieler Press, 1986), Weather Central (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), and A Book of Things (Lyra Press, 1995). His most recent chapbooks are Etudes (Bits Press, 1992) and A Decade of Ted Kooser Valentines (Penumbra Press, 1996). His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, and Prairie Schooner. Kooser is editor and publisher of Windflower Press and also writes fiction, personal essays, and literary criticism. Kooser lives in Garland, Nebraska. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

ROSEANN LLOYD has published two books of poems, War Baby Express (Holy Cow! Press, 1991) and Tap Dancing for Big Mom (New Rivers Press, 1986). Her poems have appeared in Dark Horse, Minnesota Monthly, Sidewalks, Sinister Wisdom, Earth's Daughters, and other journals, and in the anthology, She Who is Lost is Remembered. She co-edited Looking for Home: Women Writing about Exile (1991), which won an American Book Award. Each January, Lloyd teaches a poetry class in Guatemala. The rest of the year, Lloyd works as a "freeway flier," teaching poetry at several community centers and colleges in the Twin Cities area, and lives in St. Paul. Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

CARYN MIRRIAM-GOLDBERG's first collection of poetry, Lot's Wife, is forthcoming from Woodley Press. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Feminist Studies, Exquisite Corpse, Laurel Review, Wind, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

KATHLEEN NORRIS has lived in western South Dakota since 1974. Her most recent volume of poetry is Little Girls in Church (Univ. Of Pittsburgh), and her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in a World of Poetry (Oxford), Encountering Home (Univ. of Minnesota), A New Geography of Poets (Univ. of Arkansas), and Changing the Spirit Within (Beacon). Her poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

MARK SANDERS has published Before We Lost Our Ways (Hurakan Press, 1996), The Suicide (Cummington Press, 1988), and fourteen other chapbooks of poetry and prose. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North Dakota Quarterly, River City, Laurel Review, Poetry East, Tar River Poetry, Oxford Magazine, Dalhousie Review, Southern Humanities Review, and many other journals. Sanders, as editor of Sandhills Press since 1979, has edited, among other collections, On Common Ground: The Poetry of William Kloefkorn, Ted Kooser, Greg Kuzma, and Don Welch (1982) and The Decade Dance: A Celebration of Poems (1991). Sanders is also editor of the journal Hurakan, and of the Plains Poetry Series and the Main-Traveled Roads Chapbook Series. He currently teaches at the College of the Mainland and lives in Texas City, Texas. His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

Exploring the words of "subversive visionary poet" and "rebellious rock-and- roll subculture icon" Patti Smith, GREG SMITH discovers the world of good and evil, parents and their children, and selfhood that Smith considers in her works. A graduate student in English at Western Michigan University, Smith has published a previous article on John Milton's "Paradise Lost" in this journal and another on filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's The Shining in Literature/Film Quarterly.

Rather than the Hemingwayesque writer of macho adventures many of his readers have taken him to be, writer Jim Harrison, as JAMES J. McCLINTOCK persuasively shows, has "consistently explored the workings of imagination, the nature of consciousness, and the mystery of personality" of both men and women. Distinguished Professor of English and past Director of American Studies at Michigan State University, McClintock has authored two books, White Logic: Jack London's Short Stories and Nature's Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Crutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder, in addition to numerous articles. He has also taught in Poland and the People's Republic of China. He is currently working on a full-length study of Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, Peter Matthiessen, and Richard Ford.

JENNIFER RADTKE argues that Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing offers viewers two ways of looking at the world, one that whites are accustomed to in Hollywood films and the other a black consciousness of their world and place in it. Doctoral candidate in comparative literature at the City University of New York, Radtke is writing a dissertation on bi-culturalism in Caribbean literature. This is her first published article.

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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.

Recommended Citation

Parks, John G.; Molitierno, Arthur A.; Behrendt, Stephen C.; Smith, Greg; McClintock, James J.; Radtke, Jennifer; Baker, David; Campion, Dan; Hansen, Tom; Hasse, Margaret; Kooser, Ted; Lloyd, Roseann; Mirriam-Goldberg, Caryn; Norris, Kathleen; Sanders, Mark; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (2000) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 41 No. 2," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 41: Iss. 2, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol41/iss2/1