Volume 40, Issue 4
We have tried in this issue to represent some of the subjects and concerns that have animated MR for forty years, keeping it high among the handful of significant literary journals in the 20th century. From the beginning we have attempted to supply what Ralph Waldo Emerson called for in the first issue of his Massachusetts Quarterly Review in 1847: “the moral influence of the intellect.” We can add to that, in the fashion of these times, our newest slogan, ”Diversity—from the start.”
MR has always been receptive to and shaped by the great issues of our time: preeminently the African-American struggle for recognition and justice; honest Native American and other so-called minority and ethnic representation in the mosaic of American life; the exploration in memoir, document, art, verse and story of the Holocaust—the horror at the center of the past century; the great and liberating surge of feminism and the women’s movement. All of these and more are touched upon in this issue—in the contributions on Sterling A. Brown and Robert Hayden; on Neruda by a leading Puerto Rican poet; a challenging essay on Twain’s (and many mainstream critics’) treatment of Native Americans; the recovered journal of a sensitive Berlin Jewish woman murdered at Auschwitz; and a charming, poignant play about Marilyn Monroe rehearsing Chekhov!
We have been lavishly receptive to the creative arts—fiction, poetry, drama—encouraging new talent, recognizing achieved ability by the well-known, receiving many awards. In this issue, we can point to Grace Paley, Marilyn Hacker, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Kennedy, Jean Valentine, E.M. Broner. For other honored contributors over the years, look at the partial list on our front cover. It would have been patently impossible to ask for contributions from all who made our previous 160 issues memorable. We decided, instead, to ask from among those who appeared in Volume I—1959-1960—and were still at work to offer us something new. The response was gratifying. We proudly offer the con tributions by Leo Marx, Paul Gagnon, David Clark, Carter Revard, Anne Halley, Joseph Langland and Raymond Kennedy as examples of “the moral influence of the intellect,” at work then and now.
Finally, we are reproducing an art section by Leonard Baskin, to whom this issue is dedicated. His “Portraits of Artists” is a tribute to the person, along with the late Sidney Kaplan, who more than anyone shaped the appearance and authority of the journal. Baskin designed us—typography, layout, etc.—and produced a series of extraordinary art sections that distinguished MR in the early years, and then continued to supply his own sections and suggestions throughout. Along with the work of succeeding art editors, Lisa Baskin, Oriole Farb, Jerome Liebling—whose exqui site photographs grace these pages and so many previous ones—MR has continued its tradition of pursuing truth and beauty. We hope to keep doing it for at least another forty years.
—J.C. for the editors
Table of Contents
Dedication to Leonard Baskin
Preface to the 40th Anniversary Issue
Here, a poem by Grace Paley
Portraits of Artists by Leonard Baskin, with an introduction by Sidney Kaplan
Afterword: The Machine in the Garden, by Leo Marx
Rue Des ?couffes; Les Scandaleuses; Les Scandaleuses II; Nulle Part, poems by Marilyn Hacker
A Song of Another Tribe; In Our Time, poems by Muriel Rukeyser
Angels, Saints and Their Friends, a story by E.M. Broner
In Time Nothing, a poem by Dabney Stuart
Before the Deportation: A German Jewish Fate: Edith Marcuse, 1898-1945, by Anne Halley
Cup, a poem by Tom Wayman
The Blond Actress Rehearses Chekhov, a play in one act by Joyce Carol Oates
I Eat Paul Newman Daily, a poem by Doris E. Abramson
Last Call: How to Make A Chile Verde Smuggler, a poem by Juan Felipe Herrera
Thinking Ahead to Possible Options and a Worst-Case Scenario, a poem by James Tate
Coma Versus Comma: John Donne’s Holy Sonnets in Edson’s WIT, by Rosette C. Lamont
Break-Up on the Hudson, a poem by Nancy Willard
City and Country, eight photographs by Jerome Liebling
Into Many A Green Valley, a story by Raymond Kennedy
Happy Valley, a poem by Timothy Liu
Song of the Luddite, a poem by A.B. Spellman
Robert Hayden (1913-1980): An Appreciation, by Phillip M. Richards
For Ralph Ellison: Then and Now, a poem by Joseph Langland
The Professor and the Activists: A Memoir of Sterling Brown, by Ekwueme Michael Thelwell
School; A Death, poems by Jean Valentine
Srinagar Airport, a poem by Agha Shahid Ali
Why Mark Twain Murdered Injun Joe–And Will Never Be Indicted, by Carter Revard
The Torturer’s Apprentice; Town Meeting, poems by Doug Anderson
Fire, a poem by Barbara Ras
Pablo Neruda’s Dilemma, by Julio Marzán
The Electric Fan and the Dead Man, a poem by Ruth Stone
Stucco’d with Quadrupeds and Birds All Over, a poem by Dara Wier
September 19, 1985, a memoir by Ilan Stavans
Open; Sudden Masters, poems by Beckian Fritz Goldberg
Cuchulain at 2,000: Yeats’s Plays in the Forthcoming Collected Edition, by David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark
Brightness from the North, a poem by Brigit Kelly
The Limited Family Kitty, a poem by Carol Potter
Between Fragmentation and Globalism: Are We Still A Nation?, by Paul Gagnon
My Country ‘Tis of Thee, a poem by Jan Freeman
At Joe’s (manger), a poem by Liz Waldner
Contributors
Doris E. Abramson, professor emeritus of theater at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is a contributing editor to MR. Her most recent publication is a volume of poems entitled It’s Time.
Agha Shahid Ali‘s most recent book of poems is The Country Without a Post Office (W. W. Norton, 1997). He teaches creative writing at the University of Utah.
Doug Anderson‘s third book of poems, Blues for Unemployed Secret Police, will be published in May, 2000. He teaches writing at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.
Leonard Baskin is a contributing editor at MR.
E.M. Broner is the author of ten books, including her most recent publication, Bringing Home the Light.
An original founder of MR, David R. Clark is the editor of Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems, 1932, The Manuscript Materials, due from Cornell University Press in 2000.
Rosalind E. Clark is an Associate Professor of English at Saint Mary’s College, Indiana, and the author of The Great Queens: Irish Goddesses from the Morrigan to Cathleen Ni Houlihan.
Jan Freeman‘s next collection, Simon Says, is due out in 2000.
An original founder of MR, Paul Gagnon is a retired historian of France, and a Senior Research Associate at Boston University’s School of Education.
Beckian Fritz Goldberg‘s books include Body Betrayer and In the Badlands. Her poems have appeared in APR, The Gettysburg Review, and other journals
Marilyn Hacker is the author of nine books, including Presentation Piece, which received the National Book Award in 1975, and Winter Numbers, which received a Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Award in 1995.
Anne Halley, a co-editor of poetry at MR, is currently at work on essays and stories, as well as translations from the German.
Juan Felipe Herrera‘s recent books are Loteria Cards and Fortune Poems: The Book of Lives, and Crashboomlove, a novel in verse.
The late Sidney Kaplan, Professor of English, Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was a founding editor of MR.
Brigit Kelly teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her second collection of poems, Song, was awarded the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
Raymond Kennedy, a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has taught at Columbia University and has published seven novels. The piece included in this issue is the first chapter of a forthcoming novel, titled Into Many A Green Valley.
Rosette C. Lamont is a professor emeritus of theater at CUNY and now teaches at Sarah Lawrence.
Joseph Langland founded the M.F.A. program in English at the University of Massachusetts in 1964.
Jerome Liebling is MR‘s Art and Photography editor.
Timothy Liu‘s most recent book of poems is Say Goodnight, which was published by Copper Canyon Press in 1998. He is also the editor of Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, forthcoming from Talisman House in 2000.
Leo Marx is a contributing editor at MR.
Julio Marzán is a Professor of English at SUNY/Nassau Community College and a member of the governing board of Poets House in New York. His most recent publication, Puerta de Tierra, was published by the University of Puerto Rico Press.
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of the forthcoming novel Blonde, from which “The Blond Actress Rehearses Chekhov” has been adapted. Her most recent publications are Broke Heart Blues, a novel, and The Collector of Hearts, a collection of stories, both published by Dutton.
Grace Paley‘s collected poems, Begin Again, will appear from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2000.
Carol Potter recently received a professional development grant from the Massachusetts Foundations for the Arts. Her most recent collection, A Short History of Pets, won the 1999 Cleveland State University Center Poetry Prize.
Barbara Ras is an editor for the University of Georgia Press. She won the 1998 Walt Whitman Award for her book Bite Every Sorrow, and was recently named the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
Carter Revard has taught at Amherst College and Washington University. His most recent book is a collection of essays titled Family Matters, Tribal Affairs.
An Associate Professor in English at Colgate University, Phillip M. Richards has recent work appearing in Reconstructing History, Dissent and The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
The Muriel Rukeyser poems, originally published in her Collected Poems (McGraw-Hill, 1978), were reprinted with permission from William Rukeyser.
The work of A.B. Spellman appears in several anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of African American Literature.
Ilan Stavans teaches at Amherst College and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Hopscotch: A Cultural Review. His books include The Hispanic Condition, The Riddle of Cantinflas, and The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories.
Ruth Stone‘s recent volumes include Ordinary Words and Simplicity. She lives in Vermont and teaches at SUNY Binghamton.
Dabney Stuart is a former editor of Shenandoah and the New Virginia Review. His latest collection, Settlers, was published by LSU Press in 1999.
James Tate‘s most recent volume of poems, Shroud of the Gnome, was published by Ecco Press in 1997. The University of Michigan Press recently published his volume of memoirs, essays, and interviews titled The Route as Briefed.
A professor of Afro American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Ekwueme Michael Thelwell is a contributing editor for MR.
Jean Valentine lives in New York and teaches at N.Y.U. and Sarah Lawrence College. Her forthcoming collection, The Cradle of the Real Life, will appear from Wesleyan University Press in 2000.
Liz Waldner is the winner of the 1999 Iowa Poetry Prize. Her book A Point Is That Which Has No Part is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press.
Tom Wayman lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he teaches and writes. His most recent work, I’ll Be Right Back: New and Selected Poems 1980-1996, was published by Ontario Review Press in 1997.
Dara Wier‘s most recent book is Our Master Plan. A new book, Voyages in English, is forthcoming in 2000.
Nancy Willard‘s publications include Swimming Lessons: New and Collected Poems, and Telling Time: Angels, Ancestors, and Stories, a book of lectures on writing.