The Midwest Quarterly articles from September 2002

The Midwest Quarterly archives from September 2002

E Pluribus Unum: The Assimilation Paradigm Revisited
September 22, 2002... Assimilation theory has not lost its utility for the study of immigration to the United States.--Richard Alba IS THERE UNITY in diversity? Will the central core of civil culture hold? Or does the road to multiculturalism lead to exaggerated...

"The Confidence of His Country": James Monroe on Impeachment
September 22, 2002... IN THE AFTERMATH of the impeachment crisis of 1998 and 1999 revolving around President Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions, we are reminded that the "Founders," those who publicly advocated the Constitution in the Great Convention's debates in...

Surrealism. (Poems).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... SURREALISM Well, if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck it's a-- Some huckster plucked the cloud-flecked dove from Magritte's convictive sky, or chucked the...

What to eat, and what to drink, and what to leave for poison. (Poems).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... WHAT TO EAT, AND WHAT TO DRINK, AND WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON 1. Only now, in spring, can the place be named: tulip poplar, daffodil, crab apple, dogwood, budding pink-green, white-green, yellow on my knowing. All...

Concerning the naked woman on her porch. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... CONCERNING THE NAKED WOMAN ON HER PORCH The Greeks had a word for it, ate, a visitation From the outside, the supernatural come to Set up house in the middle of one's chest. But she isn't much interested in terminology....

Hieroglyphs. (Poems).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... HIEROGLYPHS Hoof-printed, padpawed, steeped in mystery, these marks in new snow shiver my heart. I think maybe the neighbor kids have left their sign but the tracks stop at the azalea and do not return. Foraging deer...

Planting the House. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... PLANTING THE HOUSE This man and his wife, happily married for over thirty years, planted a garden of herbs and berries and hummingbird flowers down the middle of the mattress of their raft-size bed. At night they...

Entering Strange Cities. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... ENTERING STRANGE CITIES "The erection itself is not incompatible with the system" --Jean Baudrillard Entering the strange cities, one finds the trees that are reaching up like supplicating hands, or only like the...

The Confusion of Time. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... THE CONFUSION OF TIME Watch the tree limbs waving at evening when the night's moon has hung itself in the last cloud you see. What diffuse light transforms your moment, enters your skin, your blood, until...

Ecology. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... ECOLOGY We are born to the coast and revel in the squall. At Moclips and Copalis, La Push and Iron Springs, the wind drives hard toward land, scolding all the dwarf and twisted trees. The close...

Equinox. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... EQUINOX The shadow of the year tilts peering through the stalks and branches of days and weeks thickening in Spring's rich soil of minutes Winter is put away again for later ...

At Our Dancing Away. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... AT OUR DANCING AWAY How far away can we go before we return through the back door to this room where friends, thinking we are still gone, talk about us, not recognizing me in my new beard, or you in Gypsy...

January. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... JANUARY Parked on the road I look hard for something to see. Snow, darker snow covers the farm pond that sleeps near the stable. A family of blue jays sails across the road. Chickadees, white and gray ...

Vultures. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... VULTURES To make them, God took the thick black fabric of shadows and tore it into shreds, With the cloths of their beaks, they buff the bones of the dead to a fine ...

Crow at Dawn. (Poem).(Poem)
September 22, 2002... CROW AT DAWN cocks a black pearl to the impending light folds his wings over a hole in the canopy of trees binds the fabric of his cloak tighter to the earth collects the glitter of stars the barking...

The Beginning, End, and in between of Adolescence
September 22, 2002... MUCH OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT is devoted to distracting ourselves from ourselves, keeping ourselves, in other words, away from what is genuinely our own. As children mature, the culture tends to push them farther and farther away from their inner...

Ceia Lume: The Romanian Way of Death
September 22, 2002... This isn't the New World but another. Love, death and life may be the same. But the way you see them is different.--Daniela Crasnaru, Western People, Eastern Cultures IN 1995 I WAS WORKING in the press section of the American embassy in...

Torturing Women and Mocking Men: Hitchcock's Rear Window
September 22, 2002... ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S REPUTATION as a misogynist is probably indelible and, it has to be admitted, he earned that reputation through scenes of violence against women in films like Psycho and Frenzy and through his often coarse comments about women...

Hell 101
September 22, 2002... I'M A PSYCHOLOGIST who teaches in an English Department at an institution known locally as The College. The College is in a suburban county whose chief executive recently announced, "We can and we will create our own identity." My profile at The...

Sifters: Native American Women's Lives.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... Sifters: Native American Women's Lives, edited by Theda Perdue. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2002. 260 pp. Paper $19.95. Native women hardly appear in contact-era documentation, and when they do appear, they are misrepresented....

The Art of Loss.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... The Art of Loss, by Myrna Stone. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2001. xix + 103 pp. Paper $17.95. When readers discover new poets, they can rely on the publisher's introductory material or form their own...

Here There Was a Country.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... Here There Was a Country, by Venus Khoury-Ghata. Translated by Marilyn Hacker. Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College Press, 2001. 103 pp, Paper $14.95. This beguiling series of three long poems begs to be compared to Salvador Dali's surreal...