The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 28 No. 4

Authors

• Edward M. Wheat
• A. Carl Bredahl
• Liz Porter Hankins
• Earl G. Ingersoll
• Carol A. Martin
• H. Wendell Howard
• Denise Low
• Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES

Whitman’s “Language Experiment” and the Making of a Therapeutic Political Epic

The Body as Matrix: Narrative Pattern in Green Hills of Africa

Summoning the Body: Anne Sexton’s Body Poems

Evading the Pigeonholders: A Conversation with Margaret Atwood

Art and Myth in Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Sacred Marriage”

The Filter of the Mind: The Edge Between the “Written” and the “Real”

POEMS

Learning the Language of Rivers

I

• Learning the Language of Rivers
• Upriver, We Drink
• Starwater
• Inside the River
• Break in the Weather

II

• Summer River
• Yellow Woman
• Little Piney Float Trip
• Swallow Colony
• Another Tornado Dream
• Summer Drowning
• An Ice Age Ghost Story

III

• Missouri River
• We Wait at the River
• November 20: The River Appears
• Delaware Cemetery
• Bear River
• The Same River, the Same Goodbye
• Sandbar Fossil Hunt

IV

• Dusk
• Mist Rose Like a Dragon
• Pilgrimage of Eagles
• A Snapping Turtle
• A Giant Blue Heron
• Star Thrower
• Glacier

It is with regret that I must announce the departure from the Board of Editors of two fine gentlemen, J. D. Haggard and Robert K. Ratzlaff. The latter has assumed the position of interim Academic Vice President of Pittsburg State University, and with these added demands upon his energies and time he reluctantly decided to relinquish his place on the Board. His comments, always to the point and helpful, will be missed.

J. D. Haggard has served the readers of this publication since Volume 1, Number 1, which appeared in the Autumn of 1959. He attempted to step down when he left full-time academic duties some time ago, but I was able to convince him to withdraw his well-earned respite from the daily demands of manuscript evaluation. This time he would not be gainsayed. His keen mind and sensitive commentary helped me avoid editorial missteps and never failed to illuminate the subject. His contributions to The Midwest Quarterly will not soon be matched.

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. . .

Walt Whitman, according to EDWARD M. WHEAT, conceived of Leaves of Grass as a means of expressing and reinvigorating America’s democratic ideals, an epic intending revolutionary change. Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of American Studies at the University of Southern Mississippi, Wheat has published several articles related to his research interests in politics and literature, political culture and socialization, and public administration.

A. CARL BREDAHL intends to rescue from undeserved insignificance Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa, an effort he hopes to expand into a book-length manuscript. Bredahl is Professor of English at the University of Florida. Among his numerous articles on American literature is a recent study of Winesburg, Ohio in The Midwest Quarterly.

DENISE LOW of Lawrence, Kansas, is the featured poet in this issue of The Midwest Quarterly. She has had recent poems in Kansas Quarterly, Phoenix, Cottonwood, Mind’s Eye, Konza, Tellus, and in two anthologies, The Art of Reading (Random House, 1986) and Healing Ourselves (Harper & Row, 1988). One poem also recently appeared in the comet/star poem issue of The Midwest Quarterly. She writes book reviews for the Kansas City Star and participates in the Kansas Arts Commission’s Arts-in-Education program. In 1979 she edited 30 Kansas Poets for Cottonwood Review. She has published two chapbooks, Dragon Kite (BookMark, 1981) and Quilting (Holiseventh, 1984). Her M. F. A. thesis for the Wichita State University creative writing program was published as Spring Geese (University of Kansas Museums of Natural History, 1984). She has given many poetry readings in Utah, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas. Since 1984, she has been teaching creative writing and English at Haskell Indian Junior College. She is currently working on two collections of poems. The river poems in this issue of The Midwest Quarterly are from a geological series about the Ice Age and the left-over river system. The second collection, entitled Selective Amnesia, is about how people choose what they want to remember.

Ms. Low gives the following description of her development as a poet: "In a recent lecture, Kurt Vonnegut stated that reading is Western-style meditation. I find writing also to be meditative, and a process of discovery. While writing a long historical poem last fall, I counted back generations and realized that I am a fifth generation Kansan (and I am the only one in my family in this generation still residing in Kansas). I write many different kinds of things-book reviews, some articles, short stories-but I engage in writing poetry in a more passionate way. I am compelled by the concentration of energy in a poem.

"During my high school years, my brother, David Dotson, and my sister, Jane Ciabattari, encouraged me to write, as did some fine teachers, including Marjorie Sullivan. I started as a student at the University of Kansas with the intention of studying creative writing or classics. The creative writing classes were always closed because of over-enrollment, so I majored in ancient history and then English. Elizabeth Schultz of the English Department was encouraging, but I quit writing poetry throughout the time I was earning my B.A. and M.A. degrees. I did see many fine poets during that time, however, including Ed Dorn, Robert Bly, and Robert Kelly. I also married and had two children.

"After graduation, I taught English part-time at Kansas State University and then at K.U. In 1978 I became a reader for Cottonwood Review, and in 1979 I took some poetry writing classes from Victor Contoski. I was encouraged by a number of other friends at that time, including Jim Bogan, Don Byrd, and Robert Greene. In the early 1980s I commuted to Wichita State and earned an M.F.A. in poetry.

"Sunsets have been a strong influence on my poetry. While growing up in Emporia, I often sat on our front porch and felt the different colors of the sunset filtering through the air. I read Rudolf Steiner and C. W. Leadbeater about color, but mostly I associated the dramatic shift from daylight to dark with poetry by Li Po and Tu Fu (given to me by my grandmother, who was a poet) and with some of the early beat poetry. Somehow in junior high, in the mid-sixties, I got hold of an anthology of beat poets, including Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, and Jack Micheline. Their energy in words came very close to duplicating the intensity I felt in sunsets, snowstorms, wind, and spring bulbs-the thrust of natural cycles within a prairie town."

The poetry of Anne Sexton, says LIZ PORTER HANKINS, focuses on her own body in order to discover her identity and find redemption. English and Spanish teacher in the Shelby County School System and herself a published poet, Hankins recently was named a Master Teacher by the State of Tennessee.

EARL G. INGERSOLL presents an edited version of a conversation with Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood. Ingersoll teaches English at the State University of New York at Brockport. He has recently edited interviews with Grace Paley, Hortense Calisher, and John Montague, for' other publications.

CAROL A. MARTIN finds "The Sacred Marriage" of Joyce Carol Oates a parable of the power of art to give new life to the human and natural worlds. This the writer does by "re-imagining" received myth. Professor of English at Boise State University in Idaho, editor of the Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Martin has published articles and reviews in a number of periodicals. This is her second article on women writers in The Midwest Quarterly.

By what means and to what purpose do writers engage us in their art? That is the subject of H. WENDELL HOWARD's discussion of the transforming role of mind in approaching the edge between the "written" and the "real." Howard is Provost of St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

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

Wheat, Edward M.; Bredahl, A. Carl; Hankins, Liz Porter; Ingersoll, Earl G.; Martin, Carol A.; Howard, H. Wendell; Low, Denise; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1987) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 28 No. 4," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 28: Iss. 4, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol28/iss4/1