The Midwest Quarterly articles from March 1993

The Midwest Quarterly archives from March 1993

Voltaire's 'Candide': a tale of women's equality.
March 22, 1993... CANDIDE, Voltaire's great philosophical conte, is undoubtedly among the most popular and perennial of literary works; as such it has received an enormous share of frequently esoteric critical attention. Invariably stressing the climactic...

Antisemitism in France.
March 22, 1993... In France, in the good old days under the German occupation, it was possible to desecrate a living Jew: you denounce him, you had Laval's police arrest him, torture him a bit, then deliver him to the Gestapo for deportation to a concentration...

Some recent philosophers and the problem of future contingents.
March 22, 1993... MY PURPOSE in this paper is to present a brief exposition of the problem of future contingents as it exercised a number of Meugeval and Renaissance philosophers, with a particular view toward showing how the Medieval-Renaissance discussion of...

Aunt Joe falls in love with Wilfred Chappell. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... When he drove into Parkers Prairie his eyes demanded a hundred songs, each one in a different key, and that's why he played me in every part of my body--just made me up as he went along. I forgot about Ross Thompson, forgot the boys in...

Wilfred and Josephine arrive in Pittsburgh. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... After driving three days, I saw it-- Pittsburgh, where Wilfred grew up, like a picture in my Bible Story Book of hell, with crevices where I could get so lost even God couldn't find me. Here all the tall houses are connected, secretive, letting...

Deciding not to go back home. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... Wilfred and I still touch each other in this fourth floor room of a Pittsburgh rowhouse, a high box with crazy stairs and sauerkraut air. A human thought up this house and built it. "Why would you want to stay there," mother's letters beg me,...

What happens next. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... And then one day, you find you're falling, because you can't keep going the way your mother taught you: baths twice a week, meat in the ice box to stop ptomaine poisoning, tonic every night to keep your weight up, and scented oil kisses on your...

Finding work. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... I used to think good and evil were big as a whole door that could suck me through against my will, but that's not true. I can stand here and decide. I open this door. See how small a turning life depends on? In this cold room, money dwindling,...

The rape. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... So I can never forget, I've kept one small glove. My husband, Wilfred, had the most delicate hands. In Pittsburgh during that winter the wind raged like a criminal come to finish us off. I sang hymns, "Leaning On The Everlasting Arms," and lay...

Aunt Joe gets off the train. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... Standing alone on the platform as the iron heart of the Soo line slides back toward Pittsburgh--empty, crying out, mad with pain, I turn towards Parkers Prairie and scan Main Street, so blank anything might be written on it. This is how they...

Summer solstice festival in Parkers Prairie, 1931. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... At midnight I send my complaints flying like bats up the chimney: For years I have been clerking at my brother-in-law's store, thirty-five cents an hour, my feet rising in my shoes like dough. I have no children. Instead, I have to watch my...

Love again. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... This morning the tiger lilies bloomed beside the house. The bleeding hearts are almost ready to start up. Even though my hair is scribbly and my feet are too big, time has a feeling in its bones. I am waiting on the porch swing. I think I'm...

Aunt Joe watches Bjorn Larsen walking in the rain. (poem) (The Aunt Joe Poems)
March 22, 1993... Outside, rain as fine as lace sprinkles Lake Adley, swelling the water till it rises like a slow ache against the throats of reeds and cat-tails in the shallow bay. Gray sky is gathering us all in like a brood hen. I want to rise to meet it,...

Model for a sustainable future.
March 22, 1993... NO FUTURE SOCIETY will be sustainable unless it meets certian ecological and political requirements. Ecologically, a sustainable society will be one in which each generation leaves adequate resources and a safe and healthy environment to all...

The vulnerable machine. (modern technology)
March 22, 1993... ACCORDING TO the March 3, 1986, issue of Time, the Pentagon believes that the command, control, and communications system necessary for fighting a nuclear war is so vulnerable that it could easily be decapitated, making it impossible to use...

Beyond the third wave: prophets of a new world order.
March 22, 1993... ALVIN TOFFLER in his latest book, Powershift: knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century, describes the effect on American society of the coming "third wave"--the so-called "information revolution." Many theorists,...