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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

Articles

The Desire to be Free: Statesmanship in the Gold Coast

McKinley and the Coming of the War with Spain

Artemus Ward: The Minor Writer in American Studies

Reconstruction History--From Poetry

Black Ship to Hell: The Nature of Reality

Undercutting With Sincerity: The Strategy of the Serious Film

Verse

Upway

Giotto's Camel

The Time Lag

Rite

This World

Neither Good Nor Bad, But

There is a River

The Dryad

Moment (Suspended)

Spring Thunder

The Indians Visit the Museum

The Wind and the Rain

Abstract

in this issue. . .

CHARACTERISTICALLY earthbound, the editors of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY have kept their feet on the ground in the selection of material for publication this spring. Let Armstrong and Scott take their rides in the sky and their walks in space (better luck next time!). Born into this world too early, we leave other worlds, their discovery and exploration, to younger spirits. Here there is enough, were there time. Enough? Too much this spring. For us it is enough to range from enlightened British imperialism on the Gold Coast to the origins of ebullient American imperialism at the tum of the last century, from Artemus Ward of the Civil War period to the passionate poetic outpourings of the Reconstruction that followed, from analysis of the (insoluble?) problems of structure, substance, and consciousness to analysis of the problems not really solved by the vaunted "serious" cinema. Six different subjects explored by six venturesome minds; no two alike aside from shared qualities of clarification, illumination, stimulation, and speculation. They looked good to us in typescript and in galleyproof. We offer them for your consideration, judgment, and enjoyment.

KWAME NKRUMAH was in China when his Sandhurst-trained generals took over the corrupt government of Ghana early this year. At the time, we were considering publication of a study of the colonial backgrounds of this new African nation; the news made our decision easy. While our first article does not explain why Nkrumah had to go, it does provide a detailed examination of the stages through which the Gold Coast passed up the long steep road to freedom. The author, ROY LECHTRECK, teaches high school and college courses at the St. Louis Prep Seminary; he first became interested in African affairs while working for an advanced degree at St. Louis University. His previous articles have appeared in The Atlantic Economic Review, The Catholic Lawyer, Social Order, and Social Studies, among others.

HISTORIANS have generally given President William McKinley a rather low rating, perhaps because they have taken too seriously Theodore Roosevelt's contemptuous judgment: "the backbone of a chocolate eclair!" TIMOTHY G. McDONALD, associate professor of history at Troy State College, Alabama, after carefully examining McKinley's role in the coming of the war with Spain in 1898, maintains that the President deserves more credit (or blame) for the course of events in that critical year, events which almost overnight made the United States an imperialist power. Professor McDonald's degrees are from Willamette University, Oregon; Vanderbilt, and the University of Washington. He served on the Willamette and University of Kansas history faculties before going to Troy. He is now at work on an analysis of the role of Southern Congressmen in World War I; a portion of that study, "The Gore-McLemore Resolutions" has already appeared in The Historian, quarterly journal of Phi Alpha Theta, the national honor society in history. The essay here published he read in a slightly different form at the 1964 Little Rock meeting of the Southern Historical Association.

INTERDISCIPLINARY or cross-department examination of various aspects of American culture is a major objective of American Studies, and growing numbers of historians and students of American literature, architecture, politics, and even sociology are active in the American Studies Association. JOHN Q. REED, professor of English here at Kansas State College, needs little introduction to readers of this journal; he has served as interim associate editor for literature on several occasions, and THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY has had the privilege of publishing his work on two earlier occasions. Last spring Professor Reed read this Artemus Ward paper as his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Midcontinent American Studies Association on the Alton campus of Southern Illinois University. Recognizing it as a major contribution to the ongoing debate that agitates American Studies circles, we asked for it and here proudly print it. Professor Reed is presently hard at work on another minor writer somewhat similar to Charles F. Browne: Benjamin P. Shillaber, who wrote under the pseudonym "Mrs. Partington" for the Boston Post and Saturday Evening Gazette. Shillaber also edited The Carpet-Bag and won a wide following through his humorous writings and lectures. This pioneering study will eventually appear in the Twayne United States Authors Series.

RECONSTRUCTION still goes on, a hundred years or more since Appomattox, and provides a fertile field for historians and political scientists. WILLIAM HANCHETT, professor of history at San Diego State College, California, here demonstrates quite well the sort of thing American Studies people try to do, not always with his success. Professor Hanchett's Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley, and before moving to San Diego in 1956 he taught at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. His articles have appeared in The Colorado Magazine, The Pacific Historical Review, and others, and The Western Humanities Review published his "Civil War History--from Poetry" in its summer, 1962, issue. He is now at work on a life of Charles G. Halpine.

CANDIDATES for the Doctor of Philosophy degree seldom take as much as an introductory course in philosophy any more, but LEONARD GILLEY, who teaches writing and literature at the University of Denver, is different. He is involved in it (writing, Denver, and philosophy), and this careful exploration of the various facets of the problems of reality may be a foretaste of his first book after completion of his doctorate. His work, whether article or poem, frequently appears in this journal.

REALITY takes many shapes, of course, and it is a subject for more (or less) than philosophers and logicians. Take the case of reality as seen through the eyes of the camera, in this particular case the motion picture camera. Well. In our first article touching the broad field of the cinema, STANLEY TRACHTENBURG, assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut, takes a hard look at (and a dim view of) some particularly outstanding American films and generalizes critically about them. With degrees from Syracuse, Columbia and New York University, he has broad writing and editing experience from undergraduate days through a hitch on the Pacific Stars and Stripes and the desk of a senior editor for the Macmillan Company. He taught at Ohio State University and Hood College before going to Connecticut. Fiction reviewer for The Yale Review, his fiction and reviews have also appeared in The Antioch Review, Critique, Modern Fiction Studies, and Western Humanities Review.

CONTRIBUTING the one dozen poems in this spring issue are six poets whose names ought to be familiar to our readers by now and another six new to this journal. Old MIDWEST QUARTERLY hands include JAMES BINNEY, professor of English at West Chester State College, Pennsylvania, whose articles, stories, and poems have appeared in a wide variety of publications . . . STUART FRIEBERT of the department of German and Russian at Oberlin College (his field is German), who has an article on Brecht coming out in the next issue of our Nebraska neighbor, Prairie Schooner . . . LEONARD GILLEY of the University of Denver where he teaches and practices creative writing . . . PAUL BAKER NEWMAN of Queens College in North Carolina, several of whose works we published last summer and fall . . . MARY OLIVER, hard at work at Provincetown on her second volume of verse . . . and TRACY THOMPSON, formerly of Kyoto, Japan, and now, according to his self-addressed return envelopes, back at home in California.

APPEARING for the first time in these pages are poems by THOMAS B. BRUMBAUGH of Nashville, Tennessee; JESSE FORBECK of St. Louis, Missouri; ANN JONAS of Louisville, Kentucky; PATRICIA ROBINSON KING of Augsburg, Germany; ARTHUR L. KISTNER of Mount Vernon, Iowa; and CHARLES L. SQUIER of Boulder, Colorado. Mr. Brumbaugh teaches art history at Vanderbilt and has published chiefly scholarly articles in that field; his poems have appeared in Accent, Art Journal, Commentary, The Georgia Review, and many other periodicals. . . . Jesse Forbeck attended Harris Teachers College and Washington University, played the violin long enough to become "tolerably competent," and several years ago turned to poetry at the ripe age of forty-five. His work thus far has appeared in American Weave, The Liberal Context, The Christian Science Monitor, and The University Review (Kansas City). He has a book of selected poems ready for publication. . . . Mrs. Jonas, out of Joplin, Missouri, is a graduate of Goodman Theatre, Chicago, with an interviewing career in radio and television. Approach, The Carolina Quarterly, The Colorado Quarterly, and Forge, have published her, and some of her best is anthologized in Contemporary Kentucky Poetry, Dark Unsleeping Land, and Deep Summer, the last two published by Morehead State College Press. . . . Mrs. King, army wife, accountant, and mother of three, has spent four of the last six years in France and Germany. Born in the “Poet's Corner" of Maine, she naturally turned to poetry under the strong influences of Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson. Her work has appeared in various magazines and newspapers, among them Scimitar and Song and Snowy Egret. . . . Art Kistner teaches literature at Cornell College and in odd hours writes poetry, short stories, and one-act plays, some of which have been published in various periodicals. . . . An assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado, with degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan, Charles Squier is co-editor of The Sonnet, newly launched anthology published by Washington Square Press, and an assistant editor of Abstracts of English Studies. He would, he says, rather write poems than anthologize or edit. His first published verse appeared last fall in Snowy Egret, and we have another of his poems marked for inclusion in our summer number.

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