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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

ARTICLES

Youth in the Technological Era

An 18th Century Dropout: Edward Gibbon, Student Dissident

Power Conflicts and the Academic Revolution

Marriage

U. S. Aid to Latin America: An Appraisal

Evolution in the Graveyard

VERSE

North

The End

The Quarry

At A Shrine

Defying the Horizontal

Epithalamium

The Rabbits on the Lawns at 2 a.m.

Rilke's Grave

A Green Voice

Earthly Bodies (for Johannes Kepler)

Always Beneath Our Feet

Alternatives

Looking for Shiloh by Edsel Ford

Abstract

in this issue. . .

FLEXIBILITY and informality of administration, operation, and organization have been among the hallmarks of this journal since its inception ten years ago; to them, add interchangeability of parts. When the Editor in Chief had a semester's leave in 1964, REBECCA PATTERSON moved easily into his chair to keep contributors happy= printers contented, and subscribers satisfied. Now the shoe is on the other foot: She is on sabbatical after a gruelling fall's work, and he is spread thinner than ever, from the Department of History in Russ Hall to the editorial suite in Porter Library. Fortunately for all concerned, she has, as usual, left matters in apple-pie-a-la-mode order; he has only to get copy to the printer for this spring issue, read and return the proofs, attend to other day-to-day chores from time to time, and count the weeks till she returns in June. By that happy time, copy for the Summer Literary Number will have gone to the printer, too.

It all sounds disarmingly easy, crowded into one paragraph like that. It's a misleading paragraph; it doesn't begin to tell the whole story, but any more might begin to sound like lamentation.

RETURNING to the prime editorial chair is a pleasure of sorts, particularly since the contents of the next two issues had been substantially selected before Professor Patterson left for New England by way of West Texas. Since she has served as chairman of an ad hoc committee on faculty-student relations since last summer, the first three articles in this issue reflect matters uppermost in her mind during that trying period. BARRY N. SCHWARTZ of the Department of Humanities of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, contributes a sympathetic discussion of the young people who compose our student populations today. PHILLIP DRENNON THOMAS, associate professor of history at Wichita (Kansas) State University, offers substantial evidence that student criticism of higher education is hardly peculiar to our own times. And ALVIN H. PROCTOR, academic vice-president and professor of political science in this College, provides a thoughtful Administrative analysis of the critical situation. The three essays make a montage of complementary and contrasting ideas, judgments, and perspectives.

RENAISSANCE MEN are rare these days, but Barry Schwartz comes close to qualifying for the title. After a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Pratt Institute, he went to New York University for a master of arts in humanities; he has completed the course work for a doctor of philosophy degree in the same area at that institution. Besides being a full-time instructor in humanities, he is lecturer in both the Art School and the Social Science department at Pratt. Editor of Readers and Writers, a national magazine dedicated to encouraging and producing the written expressions of young people, he is active in many educational programs: consultant for the Pratt Center for Community Improvement, member of the work committee of the Architectural League of New York, and director of educational planning at Central Brooklyn Neighborhood College in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Besides conducting a yearlong series of radio programs under the general title, "The Examined Life," he has published numerous articles and poems, and some books, including Psychedelic Art (Grove Press, 1968) and White Racism USA: History, Pathology, Practice, which Dell will bring out next September. Pratt Ad Lib Press is publishing his first book of poetry, The Voyeur in Our Time, this spring.

MEDIEVALISTS are seldom narrow specialists, and Professor Thomas' s interests range from alchemy /sic/ to maritime history to early modem science. His A. B. is from Baylor University in his native Texas; his master's and doctor's degrees bear the seal of the University of New Mexico. He came to his Kansas post in 1965 and was promoted to his present rank last year. His academic honors include a Phi Alpha Theta national scholarship for graduate study, a research fellowship at New Mexico, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Arabic studies at the University of Michigan, inter alia. Last August he presented a paper, "Walter of Odington’s Alchemical Quantifications," at the twelfth International Congress for the History of Sciences in Paris. In addition to several published essays and book reviews, he has written two articles, on Alcuin of York and Alfonso el Sabio, for Scribner's Dictionary of Scientific Biography now in press.

MIDWEST QUARTERLY readers, many of them, will recognize Dean Proctor as the author of two earlier articles in our pages: "Power Factors in Kansas Constitutional Revision" in our first issue (October, 1959) and "Memo to the Next President" in January of 1961, an essay written before the election of 1960 had occurred. His first two degrees are from this College, and he won his doctor of philosophy at Wisconsin in British constitutional history. In 1954-55 he enjoyed a Ford Faculty Fellowship at Harvard. Nearly all academic titles fit him: he was for years chairman of the Department of Social Science here; he served a long stint as Dean of Graduate Studies, and only recently he moved from the post of Executive Vice-President to its academic counterpart. For the past decade he has been active in the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States and is currently chairman of that national body. His article in this issue developed out of a graduate commencement address last summer and a statement to our General Faculty last autumn.

TRANSITION from one article to another is often difficult, but some readers may find a logical progression from power conflicts and revolution to marriage. Others may argue that the subjects belong more logically in reverse sequence. The very fact that marriage is the oldest human institution makes it one about which many half-truths, myths, and profound misunderstandings have clustered, especially among ethnocentric peoples. EDNA Coy was graduated summa cum lauda from the University of Texas and subsequently took her Master of Arts in anthropology there. She has studied at this College and has spent several summers working on a doctorate in history at the University of Michigan. For a number of years she has been chairman of the social science department at Amarillo College and has taught history, geography, and, with special enthusiasm, anthropology. This is her first publication, and, having once tasted blood, she may very well go on to more writing.

GEOGRAPHICAL contiguity seems to have little relationship to understanding or mutuality of interest, as witness the recent meeting of President Nixon and Prime Minister Trudeau. While millions of "Americans," oblivious of the technical American-ness of other residents of this hemisphere, annually visit both Canada and Mexico, there remains a vast and unfortunate area of ignorance about our nearest neighbors. Indeed, much of Latin America ought to be marked "Terra Incognita" on the maps and charts of most U. S. citizens. ROBERT M. SMETHERMAN of the history department of Fresno State College in California, is one of a growing number of U. S. scholars concerned about our relations with Latin America. This article grows out of his doctoral study at Claremont Graduate School and is a part of a hook in progress examining the whole confused and confusing complex of U. S. aid to Latin American countries. After taking his bachelor's degree at Claremont Men's College, he went to Los Angeles for his master's and back to Claremont for the doctorate. He taught three years at C. W. Post College of Long Island University before going to Fresno State two years ago. Barrister Press brought out his World History in 1967.

INITIALLY and generally, discussions of graveyard poetry leave us cold, but Spoon River has many more attractions than the Amazon, Orinoco, and Rio Grande combined. Perceptive readers will find empathetic links between the Schwartz article on youth and the men and women who people Edgar Lee Masters' best known masterpiece. HENRY HAHN, who teaches American literature and freshman composition at Modesto Junior College in California, grew up in our midwest and became interested in Masters through a former high school English teacher with whom he explored the Spoon River country. After a B. S. at Bradley, he did graduate work at the universities of Kansas and Colorado and is now working toward a doctorate in American Studies at the University of Minnesota with emphasis on nineteenth-century America and particular attention to early national and romantic literature.

POETICALLY, this is a superbly balanced issue: our dozen assorted verse contributions are the work of six old favorites and another six whose names now appear in our pages for the first time. The "old friend" category includes Branley Branson of Eastern Kentucky State, Stuart Friebert of Oberlin, Tom Galt of New York City, Leonard Gilley at Farmington State College in Maine, James Hearst of the University of Northern Iowa, and Peter Wild in Irvine, California. Appearing in our Caledonia 10 point for the first time is the various work of Louise DeLaurentis of up-state New York, Wayne Dodd of Ohio University, William Harrold of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Michael Heffernan of Oakland University in Michigan, M. N. Siddiqui of Hyderabad, and Paul Smyth of Cambridge, Massachusetts. To enhance the balance, six of our poets can be identified as Midwestern while the others come from as far away as the east and west coasts and India.

INTRODUCTIONS are hardly necessary in the first six cases. BRANLEY ALLAN BRANSON, the Kentucky ichthyologist, continues to emplore the craft of verse and is now in charge of graduate work in his department at Richmond . . . Just back from a year in Zurich, STUART FRIEBERT is finishing a book on C. F. Meyer for the Twayne Series on German authors; he reports that Neue Deutsche Heft/Berlin has published a group of his German poems and that Atelier Publishers of Andernach will bring out a collection of his Deutsche lyrik, Kein Trinkwasser, this fall . . . LEONARD GILLEY, late of Colorado and Pennsylvania, is settled and happy down east where he is teaching elective courses in Poetry and Tennyson & Browning this spring semester. A quick count indicates that he is clearly our most frequent contributor with a dozen articles and/or poems published in these pages in the past six-seven years . . . By contrast, this is TOM GALT's second appearance in this journal; his "Temple Garden" decorated our spring issue a year ago . . . JAMES HEARST, plowboy turned professor of English at Cedar Rapids, has directed a poetry workshop for the School of Contemporary Art at Aspen, Colorado, for the past three summers. More of his poems are scheduled to appear here next fall. . . . Working on his M. F. A. in creative writing at the University of California in Irvine, PETER WILD reports that his third collection, Love Poems, will be published this year.

PRESENTING new poets to our readers is always a pleasure. LOUISE BUDDE DELAURENTIS was born on a farm near Stafford, Kansas, and is a graduate of Ottawa University up in Franklin County. Her poetry has appeared in Discourse, Folio, Kansas Magazine, Minnesota Review, Quartet, Northeast, and elsewhere. Her present address is evocative to a New Yorker transplanted in her native state: Cayuga Heights Road, Ithaca. . . . Associate professor of English at Athens, Ohio, WAYNE DODD has had his work appear in a number of magazines and "a couple of anthologies." He recently completed a first book of poems. . . . A Carolinian by birth, WILLIAM HARROLD took his A. B. at Wake Forest and his A. M. and Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina. His work has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies here and in Canada, England, India, and Italy. . . . MICHAEL HEFFERNAN, by contrast, is a Michigander; after receiving his A. B. from the University of Detroit, in his hometown, he attained the A. M. and completed Ph.D. coursework at the University of Massachusetts as a Woodrow Wilson and National Defense fellow. An English instructor at Oakland in Rochester, Michigan, he is hard at work on a dissertation on William Carlos Williams. . . . From Red Hills, Hyderabad, M. N. SIDDIQUI writes that he studied at The Queen's College, Oxford, and teaches English at Osmania University. He has written a number of poems and essays as well as research papers. . . . PAUL SMYTH divides his time between writing and grading for Harvard Extension's freshman composition course. He studied the writing of poetry under Theodore Morrison at Harvard, whence his bachelor of arts degree. His poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Atlantic, Harvard Advocate, and the Literary, Massachusetts, and Sewanee reviews.

THAT REVIEW OF EDSEL FORD's latest prize-winning (what else?) book of poems is by VICTOR EMMETT, JR., assistant professor in the Department of English here. An article of his, dealing with several of Thomas Hardy's novels, is scheduled for inclusion in our summer literary number.

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