Volume 5, Issue 2
FRONT COVER: James Paterson
JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE, 1908
PHOTOGRAPH
Table of Contents
On Poetry and National Power, Non-Fiction by John F. Kennedy
The Legend of John Kennedy, Non-Fiction by Louis M. Lyons
Rites; Guts, Poetry by Thomas Whitbread
Church, State, and Perfection, Non-Fiction by Lewis C. Mainzer
Essay on Marriage, Poetry by Hayden Carruth
James Baldwin’s Autobiographical Essays: the Problem of Negro Identity, Non-Fiction by David Levin
Nuns; After a Death, Poetry by Anne Stevenson
WRITERS OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRELAND:
Elegy for a Battle, Poetry by Richard Murphy
Modern Ireland, Non-Fiction by W.B. Yeats
John Butler Years to Lady Gregory: New Letters, edited by G. O’Malley and D. T. Torchiana
The Death of Synge, Non-Fiction by Robin Skelton
(Letters) Synge to MacKenna: The Mature Years, edited by Ann Saddlemyer
Discoveries: Second Series, Non-Fiction by W. B. Yeats
A Centenary Celebration, Non-Fiction by Austin Clarke
The Roger Casement Trial; Letter From Gertrude Bannister (Parry), Non-Fiction by George Bernard Shaw
(Letters) A Fair Chance of a Disturbed Ireland: W. B. Yeats to Mrs. J. Duncan, edited by John Unterecker
Downstream (II), Poetry by Thomas Kinsella
Playwright to Critic: Sean O’Casey’s Letters to George Jean Nathan, Non-Fiction by Seymour Rudin
(Letters) Sean O’Casey Concerning James Joyce, Non-Fiction by Sean O’Casey
The Stoat; Man Fish and Bird; The Sheep Skull, Poetry by John Hewitt
James Joyce’s Shakespeare Chronology, Non-Fiction by Richard M. Kain
Shem Accompanied, Poetry by Robin Skelton
Clarify Begins At: The Non-Information of Finnegans Wake, Non-Fiction by Denis Johnston
The Siege of Mullingar; The Water’s Edge; Portrait of a Poet, Poetry by John Montague
Twentieth-Century Irish Literature and the Private Press Tradition, Non-Fiction by Robin Skelton
Notes on an Irish Gathering, by David R. Clark
The Nouvelle Vague in French Theatre, Non-Fiction by Rosette C. Lamont
Deed; From the Tropics, Poetry by Ruth Berrien Fox
A Madrigal of Simples: Maine, Poetry by Lewis Turco
IN REVIEW:
Scrutiny, Non-Fiction by R. C. Townsend
Sartre and Genet, Non-Fiction by Bernard Elevitch
Medieval England: Radical Re-Appraisal, Non-Fiction by Sidney R. Packard
Contributors
Hayden Carruth is a former editor of Poetry; his first novel, Appendix A, was recently published by MacMillan.
Bernard Elevitch, a contributor to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Philosophy, teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University and writes often on French literature.
Ruth Berrien Fox has published verse in many small magazines; she lives in Wellesley, Mass.
Rosette C. Lamont teaches at Queens College and N.Y.U. ; she has published articles on the literature of the absurd in The French Review, Yale French Studies and other journals.
David Levin is the author of History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman (Stanford, 1959), recently reprinted as a Harbinger book.
Louis M. Lyons is Curator of the Nieman Foundation, Harvard University.
Lewis C. Mainzer has contributed to the Yale Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and various political science journals; he teaches at the University of Massachusetts.
Sidney R. Packard is Professor Emeritus of History, Smith College.
Anne Stevenson is writing a literary biography of Elizabeth Bishop.
R. C. Tozvnsend teaches at Amherst College.
Lewis Turco is Director of the Cleveland Poetry Center.
Thomas Whitbread teaches English at the University of Texas.
AN IRISH GATHERING:
Curtis Bradford is Ames Professor of English at Grinnell College. His book Yeats at Work will be published soon by Southern Illinois University Press.
David R. Clark, of MR‘s editorial board, has published verse and criticism, and taught at the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo.
Austin Clarke is Ireland’s most notable living poet. Later Poems (1961) and Collected Plays (1962), two volumes of a series of collected editions of his work, have been published by the Dolmen Press. A third, Early Poems, is planned. His recent Flight to Africa was the choice of the Poetry Book Society.
John Hewitt‘s poetry collections include Conacre (1943), Compass (1944), No Rebel Word (1948), and Those Swans Remember (1956). Since 1957 he has been art director, the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry.
Denis Johnston, the well known Irish playwright, has completed the libretto of an opera based on his Nine Rivers to Jordan, the record of his experiences as a B.B.C. war correspondent. The collected edition of his plays “The Old Lady Says No!” and Other Plays was published in 1961. Chairman of the Department of Theatre of Smith College, he is on MR‘s editorial board.
Richard M. Kain is co-editor with Robert Scholes of The Workshop of Daedalus, a forthcoming anthology of Joyceana. Author of Fabulous Voyager: James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Dublin in the Age of W. B. Yeats and James Joyce, and (with Marvin Magalaner) of Joyce the Man, the Work, the Reputation, he is Chairman of the Division of Humanities, University of Louisville.
The Dolmen Press in association with Oxford University Press has published Thomas Kinsella‘s books of verse: Poems (1956), Another September (1958), Moralities (1960), and Downstream (1962). The very much shortened and changed Downstream II is printed for the first time in these pages. His Poems and Translations (New York: Athenaeum, 1961) won the Irish Arts Councils Book Award.
John Montague is in the United States giving readings and teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. His volumes of poems are Forms of Exile (Dolmen, 1958) and Poisoned Lands (MacGibbon & Kee, 1961). Death of a Chieftain, a book of short stories, is due from MacGibbon & Kee in the autumn.
Richard Murphy will be visiting the United States in the fall of 1964 to give poetry readings and lectures. His Sailing to an Island (New York and London, 1963) was the Poetry Book Society spring choice. An earlier volume was The Archaeology of Love (Dolmen, 1955).
Glenn O’Malley and Donald T. Torchiana teach at Northwestern University. They are working on an edition of John Butler Yeats’s letters to American friends.
Joseph Prescott, Professor of English at Wayne State University, is the author of Exploring James Joyce (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1964) and editor of Configuration, critique de James Joyce, 2 vols. (Paris: M. J. Minard, 1959-60).
Seymour Rudin teaches English at the University of Massachusetts, and is a frequent contributor to MR. He did numerous articles for the Encyclopedia International (1963) and is currently working on a book on American ballet.
Ann Saddlemyer, of the University of Victoria, B. C., obtained from Mrs. L. M. Stephens the photographs reproduced in this issue. She is editing the plays of J. M. Synge for the definitive Collected Works (Oxford).
The General Editor of that edition, Robin Skelton, has edited volume one, Poems. He has also edited David Gascoyne’s Collected Poems and several anthologies: The Penguin Book of Thirties Verse and Poets of the American Northwest—all forthcoming in 1964—and Six Irish Poets (Oxford, 1962). He is at the University of Victoria, B. C.
John Unterecker, Associate Professor of English at Columbia, is author of A Reader’s Guide to William Butler Yeats (Noonday) and editor of W. B. Yeats, an anthology of essays for the Twentieth Century Views series (Prentice-Hall).