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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

ARTICLES 

Eruptions of Performance: Hank Morgan and the Business of Politics 

The Sophistical Socrates: Paradox and Obfuscation in Republic I 

"Poor and Black and Apt to Stay that Way": Gambling on a Sure Thing in Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was a Number Runner 

Anne Finch's "Fair" Play  

"An Absolute and Utter Respect for Language": William Kloefkorn's Poetry 

POEMS 

Snow 

Extreme Unction 

The Window 

An Awful Stillness 

Play Water 

At Shark Reef Sanctuary 

On the Colorado River 

Vox 

The Dream 

Blackbird 

Portrait - 6 AM 

Morning Song 

The Bus Stop Man Tap Dances 

Beyond Reason 

There Were No Other Houses There for Miles 

This Morning 

The World That Gives Will Alter 

REVIEWS 

Philip C. Kolin, ed.; The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams 

William Sheldon; Retrieving Old Bones 

Charles Edward Eaton; Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 

Abstract

DEREK PARKER ROYAL suggests that Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee exhibited a tension between a deeply felt democratic impulse and an equally fervent belief in capitalism. The "apocalyptic crescendo" at the end of the novel indicates Twain understood the "dangers" of unrestrained capitalism, that "an economy that nurtures an unrestrained individualism can easily give birth to saviors and tyrants alike--yet with no ready means of distinguishing one from the other." Assistant Professor of English at Prairie View A & M University, Royal has published on such disparate figures as Philip Roth, Albert Camus, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Updike, Woody Allen, and Kenneth Branagh. He has written several articles on Twain, and is currently finishing a book concerning Roth's later fiction and editing a collection of essays on the present generation of Jewish American writers.

QUENTIN P. TAYLOR proposes that rather than consider Socrates/Plato the finest expression of philosophy and what comes after merely derivative, as Alfred North Whitehead contended, "it is necessary to reconsider the person of Socrates from a more critical perspective, and to entertain the possibility, as Friedrich Nietzsche did, that Socrates-cum-Plato represent decay, even corruption," represent a beginning, even a flawed beginning, not an end. Assistant Professor of History and Government at Rogers State University, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Taylor has published books and articles on topics as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Machiavelli, Burke, Nietzsche, and The Federalist Papers. His current research includes studies of Rene Decartes and John Rawls.

JANELLE COLLINS argues that the diminished world facing Francie Collins in the 1930s, with an economic depression added to the prevalent racism of even the numbers racket in Harlem, still resonates in the African American community. But this is also a story of gender and coming of age in a black society. Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at Arkansas State University, where she teaches African American and other U. S. ethnic literatures, Collins has published articles on contemporary African American novelists such as Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, and Mars Hill. She is currently working on a study of Jones's most recent novels, The Healer and Mosquito.

PRISCILLA ATKINS has published poetry in many periodicals, including Poetry, North American Review, and Tampa Review. She is the arts librarian at Hope College, in Holland, Michigan. Her poetry has appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

JODY AZZOUNI, Brooklyn, New York, has published poetry in Bitter Oleander, Cider Press Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. She has one book of poems, The Lust for Blueprints (Poet's Press). She also has published short fiction in Wisconsin Review and Willow Springs which recently awarded her the George Garrett Fiction Award.

MARION BOYER has published poetry in Atlanta Review, Driftwood Review, Crab Creek Review, and other journals. Her essays have appeared in several magazines, including Canoe & Kayak, and in the anthology, Voices of Michigan.

DAN CAMPION has published poems in Another Chicago Magazine, Blue Unicorn, College English, English Journal, Poetry, and numerous other journals. He is the author of Calypso (Syncline Press, 1981) and Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press, 1995), and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press, 1981; revised edition, 1998). His poems have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

EVA ALICE COUNSELL, Shorewood, Wisconsin, has published poetry in California Quarterly, Pontoon, Wisconsin Poets' Calendar (2002, 2003), and Porcupine. She received a grant from the Arvon Foundation in England in 1997.

MARY CROW has published four collections of poems and five collections of her translations of poetry. She is currently Poet Laureate of Colorado and lives in Fort Collins. Her poetry has also appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

K. E. DUFFIN has published poetry in Atlanta Review, Chariton Review, Laurel Review, Poetry, Partisan Review, Sewanee Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, and numerous other journals. Also a visual artist, Duffin s etchings have been exhibited internationally and published in Harvard Review and Red Letter. Some of Duffin's paintings hang in the collection of the Boston Public Library. Duffin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

TOM HANSEN has published poetry in many journals, including Art Times, National Forum, South Dakota Review, and Weber Studies. His poetry has also appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

JO McDOUGALL has published four collections of poems, including most recently, Dirt (Autumn House Press). She is co-producer of Emerson County Shaping Dream, a short dramatic film based on several of her poems. Among her awards are an Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, a DeWitt Wallace/Reader's Digest Award, an Academy of American Poetry Award, and several fellowships to the MacDowell Colony. McDougall lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

KOBUS MOOLMAN is editor of the South African poetry journal Fidelities. His poems have appeared in Stand Magazine (United Kingdom), Illuminations (U. S.), in several South African journals, and in the anthology 5 Poetry (Botsotso Publishers, 2001). His first book of poems, Time Like Stone (Natal University Press, 2000) received the prestigious Ingrid Jonker Prize for a debut collection. He is head of the Education Department of the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

LISA ROULLARD lives in Spokane, Washington, where she works as a private tutor. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Plainsongs, Literal Latté, and other journals.

JASON W. SELBY, Allerton, Iowa, is both a writer and a painter. His work has appeared in Lyrical Iowa 2001.

YOUNG SMITH has published poetry in New Orleans Review, Chaffin Journal, Crab Creek Review, Ekphrasis, and other journals. A student in the creative writing program at the University of Houston, he has received the James Michener Fellowship for poetry and the Donald Barthelme Fellowship for fiction. He lives in Houston, Texas.

ERIC TRETHEWEY, Roanoke, Virginia, has published four collections of poetry, including Evening Knowledge, which won the Virginia Poetry Prize. His screenplay, The Home Waltz, won the Virginia Governor's Screenwriting Competition. His poems, stories, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, including Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyan Review, New Republic, Sewanee Review, New Letters, and Paris Review.

STEVE WILSON'S poetry has been featured in American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon), Stories from Where We Live (Milkweed), American Diaspora (Iowa University Press), and several other anthologies. His books of poetry include Allegory Dance and The Singapore Express. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, High Plains Literary Review, New Orleans Review, and New Letters. His poetry has also appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly. Wilson spent the Spring 2003 semester in Slovenia as a Fulbright Scholar. He lives in San Marcos, Texas.

SUSANNAH B. MINTZ demonstrates that English poet Anne Finch played up negative stereotypes belittling women at the tum of the eighteenth century only to undermine them. "On the one hand, Finch could be outspoken in her critique of male resistance to women's poetry, but on the other, Finch herself clearly worries about how her poetry will be received, and thus seems at times to uphold the very standards against which her own writing might be doomed to fall short." Assistant Professor of English at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, Mintz is author of Threshold Poetics: Milton and Intersubjectivity (forthcoming from the University of Delaware Press), numerous articles in scholarly journals, and is currently working on a study of contemporary autobiographical writing by disabled women.

STEVEN LOVETT interviews poet William Kloefkorn. A poet whose work has appeared in magazines in the U. S. and Ireland, Lovett is the founding editor of Stormy Wednesday, a regional literary magazine printed in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

CYNTHIA ALLAN is Director of Theatre in the Department of Communication at Pittsburg State University. She is a playwright and director with research interests in American theatre, film and gender, and intercultural theory. She has published in Theatre Studies and The New England Theatre Journal.

DENISE LOW chairs the English Department at Haskell Indian Nations University. Her New and Selected Poems: 1970-1999 was published by Penthe Press. Her poetry and reviews have appeared previously in The Midwest Quarterly.

RONALD CHARLES EPSTEIN, a Canadian freelance writer, has recently published in the Canadian Book Review Annual and Lola, a Toronto arts magazine. Last summer, he toured central Canada, where he met scriptwriters Dan Aykroyd and Victor-Levy Beaulieu. He lives in Toronto.

This issue is the last for Pat Behlar, who served for many years as the Review Editor of The Midwest Quarterly and has now retired from the Social Sciences Department at Pittsburg State, where she taught political science. During her tenure she oversaw a significant expansion of the review section to embrace books in academic areas not previously covered. She will not easily be replaced.

Taking up that task, nevertheless, is Professor Tim Bailey, also of the Social Sciences Department at PSU, where he teaches geography. He intends to continue to widen the scope of the review section. Anyone interested in becoming a reviewer should contact him.

ANNOUNCING THE ANNUAL VICTOR J. EMMETT, JR., MEMORIAL PRIZE AND LECTURE

The editors of The Midwest Quarterly invite submission of articles on any literary topic, but preferably on Victorian or Modem British Literature, Literary Criticism, or the Teaching of Literature, to be considered for the annual Emmett Memorial Prize. The winning author will receive an honorarium and will be invited to Pittsburg State University to deliver the annual Emmett Memorial Lecture. This award is given in honor of the late Victor J. Emmett, Jr., who was for many years Professor of English at Pittsburg State University and this journal's Editor-in-Chief.

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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.

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