The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 9 No. 1

Authors

Sam Bradley
William H. Pease
Jane H. Pease
Strother B. Purdy
S. Carter McMorris
Michael F. Mayer
Sister Lucy Schneider
Samuel A. Weiss
Burton L. Carlson
Menke Katz
Harland Ristau
Edsel Ford
Gene DeGruson
Nancy Ann Dibble
Robert W. Leonard
Clinton Keeler
Tracy Thompson
E. F. Weisslitz
Sylvia Wheeler

Contents

Articles

Cousins vs. Myrdal: The Writer, Survival, and Western Culture

Freedom and Peace: A Nineteenth Century Dilemma

On the Relevance of Conrad: Lord Jim over Sverdlovsk

World Peace and the Bombs of China

The Cult of Individuality

Willa Cather's Early Stories in the Light of Her "Land Philosophy"

Freedom--When?: Dilemmas of Negro Militancy

Verse

Revelation

Razed Village

Of This Late October

Sestina for the Newly Dead

The Visit

Lament

UFO

Fall Spring

The Weather Is Where You Are

November

Sundown

Bittersweet

Abstract

in this issue. . .

THIS FIRST NUMBER of the ninth volume of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY begins a new year with-somewhat to her surprise- a somewhat new editor. During a summer leave or a sabbatical absence of Professor Cornish, it is true, she has sometimes stepped in, has chewed pencils, checked copy, struggled with an engulfing correspondence, written forewords and afterwords, read proof, worried with subscriptions and copyright and the multifarious details involved in any publication, and all the while has rejoiced rather too audibly in the prospect of a speedy release. She still tends to think of herself as a stopgap and to look forward one of these days to an altogether new editor-in-chief. In the meantime she expects to carry on the journal pretty much in its present fashion and to seek the advice and assistance of Professor Cornish, who is not leaving the QUARTERLY but merely stepping down one line of type to join the associate editors who have supported his editorial labors these eight years. Finally, it hardly needs saying that Editor Cornish is still present in every article, in every poem, of the October 1967 issue. All were chosen and marked by him. He has left to the new editor only the pleasant duty of introducing them.

IT IS part accident, part design that a common sense of uneasiness, an anxious questioning, seems to animate most of the articles in the current issue. They are a reflection of the uneasy, questioning age in which we live. Even where they begin with an examination of Conrad's Code of Honor or the dilemma of a nineteenth-century pacificist and abolitionist, their authors make a clear showing of relevance to our own perplexed day. Other articles deal with such current developments as the increasing westernization of the Communist younger generation and the rapid advance of China's nuclear power.

PONDERING the desperate optimism of Norman Cousins vs. the dogged pessimism of Jan Myrdal, SAM BRADLEY, whose poems have appeared several times in the QUARTERLY, makes his own comment respecting "The Writer, Survival, and Western Culture." A Quaker poet living near Philadelphia, Sam Bradley was poet-in-residence this past year at St. Augustine's College, Raleigh, North Carolina, and in recent months has published a book of poems and some articles and has helped prepare a volume of translations of Soviet poets to appear this fall.

THE DILEMMA of a nineteenth-century pacifist and abolitionist, as WILLIAM H. PEASE and JANE H. PEASE point out in their study of Samuel Joseph May, becomes strikingly contemporary in the light of present debate over the ethics of American activity in Vietnam and civil rights tactics here in the United States. What happens to pacifism when it clashes with the desire for freedom, with the irresistible urge to right a wrong? William H. Pease earned his B. A. at Williams, his M.A. at Wisconsin, and his Ph.D. at Rochester. He is now associate professor of history at the University of Maine. Jane H. Pease has the B. A. degree from Smith, the M.A. from Rochester. At present both Professor and Mrs. Pease are working on a study of various antislavery leaders, of whom May is one. They have published Black Utopia and The Antislavery Argument.

CONRADS’S Lord Jim and his unhappy leap from the decks of the Patna, the CIA's Gary Powers and his more famous leap from a crashing U-2-here is that "unfashionable convergence of art and life," says STROTHER B. PURDY, that "illustration of the fact that Nature copies Art, and proves thereby that the art it copies is good." Wherever the reader comes out--and the author cannily leaves him a considerable and bosky moral expanse to wander in--he should find the trip interesting, even a little frightening, for it is not Lord Jim or Gary Powers who is on trial. Professor Purdy received his M.A. degree from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of several articles and notes published in Modern Drama, American Literature, and elsewhere, and is currently teaching Old English and related subjects in the English Department of Marquette University.

WHETHER or not we agree that the rapid advance of China's nuclear power will force mankind toward interracial respect and peaceful competition, we are bound to give the matter uneasy thought. A few short years ago the leaders of China declared that they would go bare-breeched but they would have the Bomb. And they have it. The speed, the technical sophistication shown by a nation thought to be poor in technical resources, must already be setting in motion great currents of change. SAMUEL CARTER McMORRIS, author of our provocative short article on the China bomb, is a Sacramento attorney who has written legal articles for the American Criminal Law Quarterly, Ohio State Law Journal, Los Angeles Daily Journal, and the Los Angeles Metropolitan News. He is the author of numerous general articles for such periodicals as Negro Digest, Bronze America, The Liberator, the Medico-Legal Journal (London), the British Journal of Addiction, the Canadian Criminal Law Quarterly, and others.

LIGHTER in tone but still on the theme of a changing world is MICHAEL F. MAYER’S firsthand account of the rapid westernizing of tastes, dress, and ideas among Communist young people, especially in the satellite countries. Contributor Mayer, a graduate of Harvard College and of Yale Law School, practices law in New York and is the author of Foreign Films on American Screens, Divorce and Annulment in Fifty States, and a forthcoming book on libel. His work as executive director and general counsel of the Independent Film Importers and Distributors of America has frequently taken him to Europe and into the East European countries, where he gathered the impressions and information that led to the present article.

WILLA CATHER produced our one real concession to literature in this non-literary issue, but of course the editor of a journal whose very title announces its allegiance to the Midwest is bound to think of Willa Cather as a special case. SISTER LUCY SCHNEIDER, whose study of Miss Cather’s early short stories with long mellow quotations can set an editor musing about midwestern prairies, is herself a product of the Midwest. Born and brought up on a farm west of Salina, Kansas, she received her B. A. in 1948 from Marymount College, Salina, and in the same year joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia, Kansas. She taught in various Nebraska and Kansas high schools, earned her M. A. at Marquette University, and this past June received her Ph. D. from Notre Dame, with a thesis quite

naturally devoted to the work of Willa Cather. She has published several articles in the literary journals and is at present a member of the Marymount College faculty.

HITHERTO it has been the fixed policy of this journal to review no book that has not already appeared in part in our own pages, but the study of James Farmer's Freedom-When? by SAMUEL A. WEISS which appears in this issue is considerably more than a review. It is an examination in depth and a commentary on a book dealing with one of the most important issues of our day, and its peculiar timeliness is attested by the tragic events headlined in our newspapers this past summer. Our reviewer took his B. A. at Brooklyn College, his M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University, has taught at various colleges in New York and in the South, and is now professor of English at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois. His articles and poems have appeared in various journals, and he has edited an anthology of plays.

FOUR of the eleven poets in this October issue are newcomers: GENE DEGRUSON, assistant professor of English at our own Kansas State College of Pittsburg; NANCY ANN DIBBLE, now in the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa; ROBERT W. LEONARD, professor of English at Green Mountain College, Poultney, Vermont; and SYLVIA WHEELER, Olathe, Kansas. Our old friends and frequent contributors are BURTON L. CARLSON of Brookline, Massachusetts; EDSEL FORD of Fort Smith, Arkansas; MENKE KATZ of New York; CLINTON KEELER of Stillwater, Oklahoma; HARLAND RISTAU of Milwaukee; TRACY THOMPSON of Boise, Idaho, and MRS. E. F. WEISSLITZ of West Boxford, Massachusetts.

POETRY consultant and book reviewer for the QUARTERLY during this editor's absence, Gene DeGruson is certainly no stranger around our office, although he appears in these pages for the first time as a poet. He will be taking a sabbatical next spring to continue work toward the Ph.D. at the University of Iowa. . . . A native of New Hampshire, Robert W. Leonard received his academic degrees from Middlebury College in Vermont and from Columbia University. . . . Nancy Ann Dibble, a native New Yorker who spends most of her time writing westerns, has strayed as far west as Iowa City. She has just completed her M. F. A. degree at the University of Iowa and is starting work on her Ph. D. there. . . . Sylvia Wheeler identifies herself as a wife and mother and part-time poet, whose work has appeared in Kansas Magazine, the Kansas City Star, and the Ozark Mountaineer.

COMING to our seven regular contributors, we can report that Burton L. Carlson is now Associate Director of the Manpower Division of Action for Boston Community Development, a mouth-filling name, he tells us, for the Boston anti-poverty agency. . . . When last heard from, Edsel Ford was still writing poetry and fishing. . . . Menke Katz, whose poems have frequently appears in our pages, had a poem most recently in our July issue. . . . Clinton Keeler, of the English Department of Oklahoma State University, writes that he attended a Commonwealth of Arts Festival in London last fall, then visited Mallorca and Spain and wrote more poems. . . . Harland Ristau has had poems published in the Nation, Christian Century, Today, and other journals, and has brought out his fourth book of poetry. . . . Mrs. Weisslitz has poems appearing in The New Yorker, The Carolina Quarterly, The Alaska Review, and elsewhere.

Recommended Citation

Bradley, Sam; Pease, William H.; Pease, Jane H.; Purdy, Strother B.; McMorris, S. Carter; Mayer, Michael F.; Schneider, Sister Lucy; Weiss, Samuel A.; Carlson, Burton L.; Katz, Menke; Ristau, Harland; Ford, Edsel; DeGruson, Gene; Dibble, Nancy Ann; Leonard, Robert W.; Keeler, Clinton; Thompson, Tracy; Weisslitz, E. F.; and Wheeler, Sylvia (1967) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 9 No. 1," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol9/iss1/1