The Midwest Quarterly articles from June 2000

The Midwest Quarterly archives from June 2000

Thomas Eakins and Robert Frost: To Be a Natural Man in a Man-Made World
June 22, 2000... THE PAINTINGS OF Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) and the poems of Robert Frost (1874-1963) tell us what American men gained and lost in the period of industrialization between the Civil War and World War I. Four works in particular show us how the...

Robert Frost's Portrait of a Modern Mind: The Archetypal Resonance of "Acquainted with the Night"
June 22, 2000... ROBERT FROST ONCE said, "I like anything that penetrates the mysteries. And if it penetrates straight to hell, then that's all right, too" (Frost, 266). This statement underscores a mainstay of Frost's poetry: he places the careful reader in...

HOAR FROST ON THE RANGE (PENCIL AND INK, 19 x 30).(Poem)
June 22, 2000... A thick presence, whose light bulk braids barb wire fences in a white weave, like some kind of ermine rope flung through the sugared air from one glazed post to another, so that instead of a thousand jagged iron...

EYES OF CROWS.(Poem)
June 22, 2000... it is this thing with crows this mystifying fix- ation--they seem to land in rows along the powerlines--they seem to fly as though they were merely birds... no... they come as birthmarks come, ...

MISSOURI JULY.(Poem)
June 22, 2000... A Missouri July clings like a hot mustard plaster and leaves you gasping, grasping at words thin as a damp cotton shirt, but there's no word that describes what a slice of watermelon can do for your...

LINGO.(Poem)
June 22, 2000... This is how it goes when you're dating a cop. You say, "Will you be home for dinner?" He says, "Negative." You say, "Do you like this dress?" and he says, "It's a good visual." "Face to face" is a...

MEMORANDUM RE: GARLIC SALT.(Poem)
June 22, 2000... Tone's Inc. Headquarter, Des Moines, Iowa This is to inform you that it was snowing; as our city saw, a storm that did not end for weeks. This was not the beginning of things. It has been a winter of frail women ...

RECITATION IN DELIVERY.(Poem)
June 22, 2000... I walk toward the water beyond wooden houses, lugging faith down the hill that has no snow crust over the crocuses. One dove clicking stone in the top of a maple translates the invisible just like at home but...

THE GREEN SPREADS.(Poem)
June 22, 2000... What once was west is now the heart: I stand in the loam. The Mississippi bluffs near Red Wing: shale in the half-light, an unseen seven-eighths hunched behind the willow trees, a waiting body, unignited bush. I shall...

DOMESTIC SUBLIME.(Poem)
June 22, 2000... Both lake and sky Stretched out Like clean linen, Ironed, pressed, Starched, unworn Except for marks Above by geese, Stitching invisible Seams, and below By the lace tracery Of rodent tracks:...

Drawing Parallels with the Renaissance: Late-Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Possibility of Historical Layering
June 22, 2000... OVER THE PAST several years, I have continued to reflect on an important intellectual and cultural development of the later twentieth century--the emergence of a new historical consciousness brought on by postmodernism. In a previous article for...

Richard Poirier and Edgar Allan Poe: Reassessing the "World Elsewhere"
June 22, 2000... IN HIS BOOK The Humanistic Heritage, critic Daniel R. Schwarz maps the polarized landscape of much of today's literary world. His main purpose is to trace a line of Anglo-American criticism originating in turn-of-the-century novelist Henry James...

Huck the Thief
June 22, 2000... FORTUNATELY, TOM GOT SHOT. It may be lovely to live on a raft, but only when you can live high, hogging watermelons without having to "chaw" over a lot of Tom's "gold-leaf distinctions." Had the grand evasion gone as planned, had Tom, Huck, and...

The Tall Tale, American Humor, and America
June 22, 2000... LONG BEFORE THINGS were king-sized in Texas they were mighty big in Philadelphia--that is, if Benjamin Franklin's account (published pseudonymously in a 1765 London newspaper) is to be believed. There, he boasted about the tails of American...

Random Necessities.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Random Necessities, by John Wheatcroft. Cranbury, N.J.: Cornwall Books, 1999, 132 pp. $22.95. Retired Pennsylvania professor John Wheatcroft has amassed a formidable list of credits as poet, novelist and dramatist. One of his plays,...

Demons in the Diner.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Demons in the Diner, by David Ray. Ashland, Ohio: The Ashland Poetry Press, 1999, 82 pp. $10.00 paper. What impresses most about David Ray's Demons in the Diner is its variety of forms, subjects, and themes. In each poem, the number of...