The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 15 No. 1

Authors

Catherine S. Frazer
Lorna Jaffe
Rebecca Patterson
Sr. Lucy Schneider
Margaret D. Uroff
Sam Bradley
Franklin Brainard
Jack Early
Stuart Friebert
Louis Ginsberg
Albert Goldbarth
Greg Kuzma
Tomas O'Leary
Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES

The Tragedy of Watergate

Women's Place in Academe

The Cardinal Points Symbolism of Emily Dickinson (II)

Willa Cather's "The Best Years": the Essence of her "Land Philosophy"

Sylvia Plath on Motherhood

POETRY

Revival of the Play

A Jaunt with Swinkman

Children of Chalets

Little Aubade

Money

Midnight Streets

Intercourse in Bad Weather

Pact

Song for Natural Defenses

Farmer

The Earth

The Men of Moss

The Reformed Drunk Enters Paradise

Abstract

in this issue. . .

WE BEGIN OUR FIFTEENTH YEAR by devoting the bulk of this issue to articles by and largely about women. CATHERINE S. FRAZER, head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Denver, contributes an analysis of the Watergate Scandal, written in early June. Professor Frazer earned her B. A. at Wellesley College and her M. A. and Ph. D. at Yale University. She has published articles on David Hume in the Journal of the History of Philosophy and Studies in Burke and his Time and has had one previous article in THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY (October 1968). She is at work on a book-length study of contemporary value conflicts and priorities. . . . LORNA S. JAFFE's brief but closely documented examination of the status of women in the university is evidently the product of both research and experience. She is currently working full-time on a doctoral dissertation for the Yale History Department. She has been a teaching fellow at Yale and an instructor in history at Temple, where she was chairwoman of the Women's Studies Lectures Committee and a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Temple Women's Rights Coalition. . . . REBECCA PATTERSON concludes her two-part essay on Emily Dickinson's compass. She herself spent part of last summer in the quarters of the North, making her way beyond Anchorage to the Arctic Circle. . . . Though scholars used to express uncertainty as to the exact year of Willa Cather's birth, it has been generally accepted that 1973 is her centennial. Appropriately, SR. LUCY SCHNEIDER, associate professor of English at Marymount College, Salina, Kansas, has given us a study of Willa Cather's persistent attitudes toward the land as revealed especially in her last story, "The Best Years." Sister Lucy has published other articles in the Kansas Quarterly, South Dakota Review, and Renascence. Apart from academics, she is currently a member of the executive board of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Concordia, Kansas, while also serving as a house-parent at St. Joseph's Home in Salina. . . . This year also marks the tenth anniversary of the suicide of Sylvia Plath, a fearfully gifted young poet whose four lean books seem almost to embody the whole history of anxiety in this hurtful century. MARGARET D. UROFF has chosen to examine one of Sylvia Plath's least recognized accomplishments-her innovative poetic exploration of the difficult subject of motherhood. Professor Uroff (Ph. D., Brown University) teaches in the English Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and has published in English Language Notes, Concerning Poetry, and American Literature. Her book on Hart Crane will appear sometime in 1974.

ABOUT ALL THAT PREVENTS us from straightforwardly designating this October number as a Women's Issue is the fact that all of the poems in the poetry section were written by men. Making no apologies, we insist that this situation is perfectly appropriate, for reasons which several of the poems may indicate. SAM BRADLEY explains that Swinkman, the "friend" he writes of in one poem, "has been in the technological prison for some time, and his response is not to give up; he's defeated and yet undefeated.'' Mr. Bradley lives in Honeybrook, Pennsylvania. He recently won $100 for the best poem published in the Arizona Quarterly in 1972. . . . FRANKLIN BRAINARD' s Raingatherer, reviewed in this issue, is the first book from the newly formed Minnesota Writers' Publishing House. It has gone through its first edition and will be reprinted soon. Mr. Brainard read at the University of Minnesota last month. He lives in New Brighton. . . . STUART FRIEBERT still teaches at Oberlin, where he helps edit Field. He has recent poems in Esquire and the Iowa Review. . . . JACK EARLY spent last summer as a park attendant on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. His current mailing address is Carlshend, Michigan. . . . LOUIS GINSBERG was promoted last spring to the rank of adjunct associate professor of English at the Paterson branch of Rutgers, where he teaches courses in contemporary American writing, including the poets of the Beat Generation, for which he was partly responsible. He and his son Allen will be giving their highly successful joint readings both here and abroad throughout the winter and spring of 1974. . . . ALBERT GOLDBARTH is one of America's most widely published younger poets, with work in Poetry, The Nation, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, and practically everywhere else. He received Poetry Northwest's Theodore Roethke Prize in 1972. Under Cover, one of his two collections published this year, is reviewed in this issue. . . . GREG KUZMA has also published ubiquitously in little magazines and has begun to gather his poems into a number of short collections: The Buffalo Shoot (Basilisk Press, 1973), Good News (Viking, 1973), A Problem of High Water (West Coast Poetry Review Press, 1973), and, shortly, The Obedience School (Three Rivers Press). He conducts poetry workshops at the University of Nebraska and publishes chapbooks from his own Best Cellar Press. . . . TOMAS O'LEARY lives in Cambridge, where he works occasionally. His greatest recent achievement was the discovery last spring of Hernando, the best bartender on the East Coast, in La Crepe on Harvard Square. Mr. O'Leary's full-length collection of poems, Fool at the Funeral, is ready for a publisher.

OUR BRIEF REVIEWS are by Michael Kelly of Slippery Rock State College and acting editor-in-chief Michael Heffernan.

Recommended Citation

Frazer, Catherine S.; Jaffe, Lorna; Patterson, Rebecca; Schneider, Sr. Lucy; Uroff, Margaret D.; Bradley, Sam; Brainard, Franklin; Early, Jack; Friebert, Stuart; Ginsberg, Louis; Goldbarth, Albert; Kuzma, Greg; O'Leary, Tomas; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1973) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 15 No. 1," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 15: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol15/iss1/1