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The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought

Contents

Articles

Stranger in a Strange Land: Wordsworth in England, 1802

Conrad's "The Secret Sharer"

Emily Dickinson's Debt to Günderode

Apocalyptic Imagery in Melville's "The Apple-Tree Table"

Rabbit, Run: An Image of Life

Threat and Accommodation: The Novels of Saul Bellow

Verse

Matin

Unwrapping

Broken Palm

Raggedy Ann

To Emily D.

I Never Saw A Moor, Either

Changes of the Summer

Exchange Teacher

Pagoda

The Garden

June Street

I Chase

Choice

Abstract

in this issue. . .

INDULGING natural preference and at the same time bowing to a tradition still green, the editors present their fifth Summer Literary Number. Their six major selections draw from at least three diverse literary streams: Nineteenth-century English (early and late), nineteenth-century American, and the contemporary American novel. More specifically, two articles deal with important figures in English letters: William Wordsworth, the Romantic poet who grew to estrangement from and disillusion with his native country, and Joseph Conrad, English by adoption and recognized as a superior craftsman in his second tongue by virtue of a distinguished list of novels and short stories which still command not only respect but readers. Two other articles examine curious facets of two curious American figures: our "chief woman poet," Emily Elizabeth Dickinson of Amherst, and perhaps our greatest novelist, Herman Melville of Brooklyn. Finally, two others treat aspects of the work of two living American writers, John Updike and Saul Bellow.

ALIENATION from his times and country is almost a constant with the serious artist. One all too easily thinks of the virtual disappearance from American life and letters of Melville, of the bitter later novels of Fenimore Cooper, of the expatriation of Henry James, of the death of Bela Bartok from starvation in New York in 1945. The list is infinitely longer and includes representatives of virtually every nation. MARION MONTGOMERY, of the department of English at the University of Georgia, casts his eye and mind back 165 years to look at Wordsworth in 1802, four years after publication of Lyrical Ballads, a decade after the First Coalition had attempted to crush the French Revolution. He finds much more than Wordsworth and his (?) England. Professor Montgomery, whose specialty is contemporary literature with particular reference to the American South, has published two books of poetry, Dry Lightning (Nebraska, 1960) and Stones from the Rubble (Argus, 1965), and two novels, The Wandering of Desire (Harper, 1962) and Darrell (Doubleday, 1964). His articles, poems, reviews, and short stories appear in a wide variety of journals, most frequently in The Georgia Review.

THE ARTISTRY of Joseph Conrad has enjoyed such high repute for so many decades that critics seldom exercise the temerity to challenge his literary accomplishments. Nothing daunted, LEONARD GILLEY, assistant professor of English at the University of Denver, finds a kind of aesthetic "credibility-gap" in one of Conrad s highly acclaimed short stories. Never wanting in either courage or conviction Professor Gilley proceeds to exploit that gap rather convincingly. His articles and poems appear frequently in this and other journals; this fall he'll be associate professor of English at Bloomsburg State College in Pennsylvania after a vacation in Southwest Harbor, Maine.

THE PROTECTION of Emily Dickinson or, at any rate, the preservation of the myth of Dickinson as "New England nun" was begun by her family and carried forward by ardent admirers who stoutly refuse to give credence to substantial evidence. Indeed, some of them refuse even to look at the evidence. REBECCA PATTERSON, professor of English in this College and literary editor. of this journal, horrified Dickinson devotees sixteen years ago with The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (Houghton Mifflin, 1951). Subsequent research substantiates rather than weakens the Patterson explanation of that riddle. The article here published provides new and persuasive corroborative evidence. Professor Patterson hardly requires introduction to readers of this Journal, having been this editor's alter ego and right hand for more than eight years. This is the most appropriate place to announce that she has graciously accepted appointment as the new editor-in-chief of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY, her reign to commence with the next (October) issue.

HERMAN MELVILLE is too generally remembered only for Moby-Dick and sundry other adventure stories for boys. Lost to general view in post-Civil War America, he has enjoyed a tremendous vogue m recent decades. MALCOLM O. MAGAW, associate professor of English at Louisiana State University in New Orleans, here examines the imagery in one of Melville's skillfully crafted short stories. Although a native of Chicago, Professor Magaw's degrees have a warm Southern aspect: A. B. from Duke, M.A. from Emory, and Ph.D. from Tulane (where he did intensive research in Melville studies under the direction of Richard Harter Fogle). His articles (on Keats, Yeats, Hawthorne, and Melville) have appeared in Academe, Bucknell Review, and Explorations of Literature (Louisiana State University Humanities Series). Currently Danforth Associate at LSUNO where he heads the American Literature section of the English Department, he is nearing completion of a book-length critical study of Melville's use of the Christian myth.

MR. DOOLEY once objected to the American tendency to revere

only dead authors, a tendency which he hung on Andrew Carnegie and the libraries he hoped (according to Mr. Dooley) "to crowd on ivry man, woman, an' child in th' counthry." That tendency has fortunately had its day and is a thing of the past-like Mr. Dooley himself. Now the literary journals and newspapers are full of articles, essays, and reviews on living writers, and among those frequently discussed in recent years is John Updike. Among his several novels, Rabbit, Run has attracted considerable attention and critical acclaim. FRED L. STANDLEY, assistant professor of English at Florida State University in Tallahassee, carefully analyzes that novel and its relevance to contemporary life. Professor Standley, with his A. B. from West Virginia Wesleyan, a B. D. from Garrett Theological Seminary, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, also teaches "Religion and Literature" in the Florida State department of religion. He has published in Notes and Queries, The South Atlantic Quarterly, and Victorian Newsletter and is at work on a book on Stopford Brooke in the Twayne English Authors Series.

ENGLISH NOVEL courses used to begin with Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, and Swift and end with Hardy, James, and Sinclair Lewis, the latter often the only concession to American Literature, a phrase which used to provoke little but scorn in many departments of English. PATRICK MORROW, however, graduate student and teaching assistant at the University of Washington in Seattle, belongs to a later and luckier generation: His present essay on Saul Bellow began in a "wild course on the novel since 1930"! If only Mr. Dooley had lived to this happy day. While comparisons are invidious, they happen: Obviously Morrow finds more mature substance in Bellow than Standley can find in Updike. But read them both for yourself and make up your own mind without any further editorial interference. Mr. Patrick did his undergraduate work at the University of Southern California and has published criticism, fiction, poetry and even translations in Descant, Expression, The Levee, The North Dakota Quarterly, The Personalist, Poet Lore, Quartet, The Southern Poetry Review, and Western Review. He recently became a bibliographer for the new journal, Western American Literature, and this fall he faces doctoral comprehensives.

TWELVE POETS have contributed the thirteen poems in this issue; six of them are men and women whose names and work ought by now to be fairly familiar to our readers. Poems by BERNICE AMES of Los Angeles have appeared in two earlier numbers of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY besides a variety of publications including Ante, Commonweal, Folio, Poetry Northwest, and Prairie Schooner; Alan Swallow Press recently published a volume of her work, Antelope Bread. . . . A brace of poems by EMILIE GLEN of New York appeared in our spring issue; her contributions frequently grace our pages as well as those of numerous other journals here and abroad. . . . MENKE KATZ of Brooklyn edits Bitterroot and contributes to a wide variety of magazines from The Atlantic to South and West; a dozen of his poems (from Land of Manna) came out early this year in Japanese translation: Twelve Poems of Menke Katz (Tokyo: Subterranean Press). . . . ROSE MENENDIAN of the editorial board of Encyclopedia Brittanica made her debut with us last October and took an encore in our spring issue. . . . MARY OLIVER, who continues to live and work at Provincetown, Massachusetts, has honored us by her attentions for some five years now. . . . TRACY THOMPSON lives and works away in the English department of Boise College out in western Idaho.

OTHER SIX are hardly novices, although their poems are set in our Caledonia for the first time this summer. FRANKLIN BRAINARD edits Plainsong at New Brighton, Minnesota; his poems have appeared in The Chicago Jewish Forum, The Educational Forum, Epos, The Horn Book, and Jewish Frontier. James D. Thueson of Minneapolis has accepted a book of his for publication later this year. . . . MAUREEN (Mrs. James P.) CANNON is a Ridgewood, New Jersey, housewife and mother of two who has been writing verse for as long as she can remember and publishing and winning prizes for the past four years. A 1943 graduate of Barnard College and active member of several poetry clubs, she took first prize in 1965 in the National League of American Penwomen, second prize in the Writer's Digest 1966 poetry contest, and honorable mention last spring from Conrad Aiken and the Poetry Society of Georgia--for "Raggedy Ann"! Many journals, magazines, and newspapers have published her work including American Weave, Chatelaine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Green World, The Portland Oregonian, and The Villager. . . . PATRICK W. GRAY is poetry is working toward an M. F. A. in poetry in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. His poems have appeared or will appear in Ante, The Laurel Review, and Poet Lore. . . . R. D. LAKIN of Fort Collins, Colorado, here makes his debut as a poet; his literary and philosophic essays have added substantially to some five past issues of this journal, most recently in April this year. . . . RICHARD SALE is a Texan (all three degrees from the University of Texas, Austin) who teaches English at North Texas State University, Denton. In 1963-64 he was Fulbright lecturer in American literature and civilization at the University of Mohammed V, the national university of Morocco. Several of his poems have been published in Descant and The Laurel Review; he is now working on a study of the novelist Brian Moore for the Twayne World Author Series. . . . REGINALD A. SANER of the department of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is on a Fulbright to Florence to do research in Renaissance drama. A teacher of English literature, he specializes in Italian and English phases of Renaissance; he is presently writing a book on Thomas Heywood (1574?-1641), an “interesting hack” of that period. His (Saner’s, not Heywood’s) poems have appeared in Carleton Miscellany, The Green Knight, Western Humanities Review, and Xanadu.

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