The Midwest Quarterly – Spring 2005

Rare is the poem that combines senses, emotions, and intellect, that contains ability to ease in and out of natural worlds, both internal and external. Rare is the poem that combines senses, emotions, and intellect, that contains ability to ease in and out of natural worlds, both internal and external. But in this issue of The Midwest Quarterly, all thirteen poems, to be exact, have this power. Take this stanza from “Stations of the Cross,” written by Steve Wilson: “the warm lull of the field, a farmer rests / beside his wagon. Light in a drawer. Light, by / children remembered at the edge of the bay.” And sometimes two or three other worlds merge, as in this line from “Subterranean,” by Rebecca Aronson: “What trips you is an arbor or an aphid, cow’s blood as it blossoms, after rain, into footprints.” When you have had your fill of poems, turn to the handful of essays, varied in subject matter. A modern tragicomedy, whose characters are drawn from Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sir John Falstaff, teaches us in the present day about coping. Or read how the great author Poe’s death connects with his views on democracy and his several writings which bring up mob activity, voters, drunkenness. Or learn about the unreliability of hypothetical cases thrown out to the public in an attempt to use as evidence our acceptance of one moral theory or another. Then, what do or should we look for when admiring somebody, such as Orwell. And you will not want to miss Flannery O’Connor’s humor, how it was used with a social purpose, which was correction. In the back, three book reviews are balanced with analysis and insight. Provided is a summary, so you can decide which essay to read first. [www.pittstate.edu/engl/mwq/MQindex.html]