The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 28 No. 3

Authors

• David R. Pichaske
• Paul McCarthy
• Chris Anderson
• Tom Hibbard
• Beth Kraig
• Roy Lechtreck
• Kelly Averill
• Jack Folsom
• Edward Locke
• Ramón E. Martinéz
• Janet McCann
• Marilee Richards
• David Williams
• Kathleen L. Nichols
• G. W. Clift
• Charles Cagle
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES

The Midwest Village, 1986: A Progress Report

Houses in Walden: Thoreau as "Real-Estate Broker," Social Critic, Idealist

Fiction, Nonfiction, and the Rhetoric of Silence: The Art of Truman Capote

Freedom by Chance: Dada and Surrealism

The Liberated Lady Driver

Expanding the Constitution: The Post Office Clause

POEMS

Remembered Feast

The Rune of the Lapwing

Midwest

Rorschach Poem Number

In Our Parents' House

The Memory

Listening to Guy Dull Knife Sing

REVIEWS

Alicia Suskin Ostriker; Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America

Robert Dana; Against the Grain: Interviews with Maverick American Publishers

Gene DeGruson; Goat's House

The Poetry Editor is looking for poems dealing with farms, farming, and the farmer. The prose editors would also welcome submissions relevant to these topics of an analytical or reflective nature with appeal to a scholarly audience. The outcome may result in a special issue.

Abstract

in this issue. . .

Observing the recent renascence of the Midwest, DAVID R. PICHASKE takes his readers on a tour with stops in Alliance and Springfield, Illinois, Madison, Minnesota, and the Platte River Valley in Nebraska. He finds decay and an understanding of what has been lost, tempered with hope for the future. Associate Professor and Chairman of the English Department at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota, Pichaske has written three books (Chaucer's Literary Pilgrimage and A Generation in Motion being the most recent) along with articles and poems in a wide variety of venues.

Thoreau's eye, so keen observing Nature's abode, was, as PAUL McCARTHY establishes, equally discerning in the study of Man's habitations. Professor of English at Kansas State University, author of John Steinbeck and editor of Long Fiction of the American Renaissance: A Symposium, along with many scholarly articles, McCarthy is presently working on a book-length study of madness in Melville's fiction.

Using restraint, withholding comment, notes CHRIS ANDERSON, Truman Capote crafts a rich blend of fiction and nonfiction, a narrative which demands much and rewards accordingly. Assistant Professor of English at Oregon State University, Anderson has essays in a number of scholarly journals. The present article joins chapters on Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion in a book to appear this Spring from the Southern Illinois University Press, Style as Argument: A Reading of Contemporary American Nonfiction.

KELLY AVERILL has published more than a dozen poems in the past year in such journals as the Plains Poetry Journal, the Celibate Woman Journal, the Dan River Anthology, and Hysteria. She recently moved from Ohio to Oregon where she will be pursuing a masters degree in folklore at the University of Oregon.

JACK FOLSOM is a novel writer as well as a poet. His books include The Endless Mirror (Crowell, 1974) and a recent book of poems, Corona. His poems have also appeared in Kentucky Poetry Review. He teaches English at Montana State University.

EDWARD LOCKE, a retired librarian, is an officer of the New England Poetry Club. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, Chicago Review, and Beloit Poetry Journal. One of his poems appeared in Midwest Quarterly in 1966. Welcome back!

RAMÓN E. MARTINÉZ has recently published poems in Bilingual Review, Rio Grande Writers Quarterly, ViAztlan, and New Mexico Humanities Review. For seven years he worked in the Maricopa County Assessor's office, but is now working toward an MFA at Arizona State University.

JANET McCANN teaches English at Texas A & M University. She is editor of Piddiddle and has published poems recently in Southern Poetry Review and Kansas Quarterly.

MARILEE RICHARDS is a member of the Berkeley Poets Co-op and has published poems in its magazine and in the Sun. She works as a social worker in an adoption agency and has published a poem in an anthology on adoption, Poetry Perspectives on a Grafted Tree.

DAVID WILLIAMS is a fiction writer and a song writer as well as a poet. His fiction has appeared in Towers, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Cimarron Review, and his poems have appeared in Phoenix, Black Bear Review, and Calliope. He has also recorded two albums of original songs and has appeared on several National Public Radio shows. He was the winner of the 1986 Judson Q. Owen Prize in Literature.

"From the color the nature / & by the nature the sign." Ezra Pound, author of these words, points to the problem central to Dadaism and Surrealism, in TOM HIBBARD's view, and that is how to respond to the world of the twentieth century, anno Domini. Writer of visual poems and other experimental works, Hibbard lives in Wichita, Kansas.

How far have women in contemporary American society gotten away from the stereotypical, befuddled, "Hey, Lady," image of the past? BETH KRAIG has provided some answers. Now completing her doctorate in history at the University of Washington, Kraig has one previous publication and hopes to turn the subject of the present study into a dissertation and a monograph.

Just how "loose" an interpretation of the Constitution is necessary to respond to changing circumstances? ROY LECHTRECK in the Midwest Quarterly's contribution to the current Bicentennial, shows how the Post Office clause might cover an astonishing range of activities. Lechtreck, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Montevallo in Alabama has published widely on law and politics, including two articles in this journal.

KATHLEEN L. NICHOLS is Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of Women’s Studies at Pittsburg State University. She teaches courses in American literature and women writers.

GARY W. CLIFT teaches writing at Kansas State University and edits Literary Magazine Review. He has published fiction in Vanderbilt Review and was associate director of the Summer Conference for Writers at KSU 1986.

CHARLES CAGLE, who teaches creative writing at Pittsburg State University, has written articles on Whitman, Verlaine, Hart Crane, and W. H. Auden. He is the author of a text, Writing Fiction, published by the University of Kansas.

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 first 6 pages for author and publication information.

Recommended Citation

Pichaske, David R.; McCarthy, Paul; Anderson, Chris; Hibbard, Tom; Kraig, Beth; Lechtreck, Roy; Averill, Kelly; Folsom, Jack; Locke, Edward; Martinéz, Ramón E.; McCann, Janet; Richards, Marilee; Williams, David; Nichols, Kathleen L.; Clift, G. W.; Cagle, Charles; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1987) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 28 No. 3," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 28: Iss. 3, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol28/iss3/1