Kindred Spirits Research Articles

Notes on the State of the Constitution

Notes on the State of the Constitution Jonathan Gienapp Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention. By Mary Sarah Bilder. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015. 368 pages. Cloth. No source has proved more important to scholarly understanding of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 than the Notes that James Madison kept as a delegate.1 Indeed, few if any sources in American history have been more extensively utilized. And yet, for all the ink spilled over the convention, Madison, and early American constitutionalism, no prior study has investigated the history of this single indispensable source. At last, Mary Sarah Bilder’s Bancroft-winning book, Madison’s Hand, fills this gaping void. In a monumental work of scholarship that will profoundly change how historians, political scientists, constitutional lawyers, jurists, and engaged citizens understand the creation of the U.S. Constitution, Bilder painstakingly reconstructs the history of Madison’s Notes. In so doing, she transforms the established understanding of them and, in turn, the Constitution. She also offers a powerful reminder of the importance of thinking carefully about the materiality of historical documents in an age of ever-proliferating volumes of printed and digitized primary sources. Since the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention famously agreed to conduct their proceedings in secret, little eyewitness testimony survives. Official journals were kept by the convention’s appointed secretary, William Jackson, but these records have long been subject to scholarly ridicule, often quite unfairly, for doing only what would have been expected (recording official motions, procedures, and vote tallies) rather than what subsequent scholars would have preferred (providing a transcript of the debates).2 Additionally, like Madison, more than ten other delegates kept [End Page 145] personal notes. But no one else’s are anywhere near as detailed or exhaustive as Madison’s, which cover every day of the convention. Without Madison’s Notes, it would be impossible to track the dynamics of the convention’s debates or to meaningfully understand why the Constitution took its ultimate shape. Madison has long been christened the “father of the Constitution,” not only because he so forcefully shaped the convention but also because he preserved the events in Philadelphia for posterity, thus ensuring that the origins of the new nation would not be, as he later put it, “buried in silence or veiled in fable.”3 Historians, often inclined to see a kindred spirit at work, have readily embraced the portrait of Madison that he himself cultivated, as a historically conscious archival steward.4 Such blithe confidence in Madison’s Notes is especially problematic given one crucial detail: he revised them, first during the convention itself and then sporadically over the course of the next decade. That the Notes were modified has long been acknowledged, but little has been known about the extent, timing, character, or importance of these revisions. Indeed, since virtually all previous scholars have approached the Notes instrumentally—using them to narrate the convention and explain the political and theoretical debates that it occasioned, rather than considering them as an object of historical analysis themselves—knowledge of the revisions has done little to dampen confidence, perhaps even blind faith, in the Notes as a more or less reliable transcript of the convention’s proceedings. Breaking with this long tradition, Bilder has produced the definitive study of this foundational historical source by writing, as she puts it, a “biography of the Notes” (1). And in finally making the Notes the protagonist of the story, she compellingly shows both that Madison’s Notes were revised far more extensively than has been realized and why the magnitude of his revisions are so important. Written in clear, crisp prose, Madison’s Hand charts the making and remaking of Madison’s Notes chronologically. The book begins by recounting the years prior to the convention when Madison acquired the habit of keeping a legislative diary during his stint in the Confederation Congress. At a time when legislative sessions were closed and their debates were not published, such diaries served as “political intelligence” (23), to enable participants to advance their own political aims and to communicate events to confidantes not in attendance. When Madison continued this tradition at the 1787...

Someday, Narwhal by Lisa Mantchev

Reviewed by: Someday, Narwhal by Lisa Mantchev Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Mantchev, Lisa Someday, Narwhal; illus. by Hyewon Yum. Wiseman/Simon, 2017 32p Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-7970-7 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-7971-4 $10.99 Ad 3-6 yrs “Red front door. Potted plant. Umbrella stand. Piano.” These things make up the majority of the little narwhal’s view as she swims around her unmoving fishbowl. There’s also the window, though, and the whale dreams of traveling through the world beyond it. On second thought, it might be a little cold, a little too big, and how would she walk anywhere, anyway? Her young owner apparently knows her wishes and fears, and he brings a fanciful set of friends to help her take a trip into the outside world, with the penguin pulling the bowl in a wagon, the giraffe [End Page 123] navigating the way, and the bat checking the weather. Some nice repetition makes this useful both as a storytime pick or a readalone, and the playful text provides gentle humor. However, the message is a difficult one to parse—the protagonist is still trapped in a tiny space too small for even a goldfish, and kids will reasonably ask why taking her on the road is a possibility when putting her back in a better habitat isn’t. The colored-pencil illustrations mirror the story’s cozy feel with soft textures and clean white spaces. Youngsters looking longingly out the window but hesitating at the doorstep may find both a kindred spirit in and a gentle nudge from little narwhal. Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Frankie by Shivaun Plozza

Reviewed by: Frankie by Shivaun Plozza Kate Quealy-Gainer Plozza, Shivaun Frankie. Flatiron, 2017 [352p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-250-14299-3 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-250-14301-3 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 Anger is Frankie's baseline emotion, and it doesn't take much to launch her into to full-out fury, especially when it involves any discussion of her estranged mother, who left a four-year-old Frankie in a shopping mall thirteen years ago. Surprisingly, she reacts with more curiosity than rage at finding out she has a teenaged half-brother. Frankie finds a kindred spirit in Xavier, who similarly has a rough past and a stubborn nature, though Xavier's rebellion comes in the form of larceny while Frankie is quick with a punch or two. Soon, though, Xavier goes missing and Frankie must track him down through his shady dealings, a trek that may or may not lead to her mother and is made all that more complicated by Nate, a boy who tags along. The tension in this Australian import moves much like Frankie's temper, simmering at times, exploding into action, and then smoothing out only to await another blowup. Her will-they/won't-they romance with Nate is entertaining in its tendency toward biting repartee over swoony sighs, and her relationship with her guardian aunt is oddly sweet, as trash-talking, no-nonsense Aunt Vinnie relentlessly roots for Frankie at every turn, knowing full well that Frankie's probably going to mess it up again (and she does, many times). Readers, too, will find themselves cheering for Frankie, and the bittersweet ending leaves Frankie yet again challenged by tragedy and yet again giving it her full might to overcome it. KQG Copyright © 2017 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Między lękiem a sztuką. Kobieta w twórczości Haliny Korn- Żuławskiej

BETWEEN FEAR AND ART. WOMEN IN THE WORKS OF HALINA KORN-‑ŻUŁAWSKA The article is a reflection on the ambiguous and diverse art by Halina Korn. Still underrated, the painter, sculptor and writer worked in the shadow of her prominent husband Marek Żuławski as one of the so called “naive artists.” Is that valid? The critics cited in this writing answer this question. “Between fear and art” is also an attempt to abolish the theory that Korn was suffering from depression, through which her works may me interpreted. It was not the disorder, but the extraordinarily strong and ambiguous influence of her husband which determined the form and content of her artistic message—a relationship between kindred spirits, marked by loneliness, became the reason of both Korn’s birth and death as an artist and a woman. Femininity, so important and constantly tested so severely in her non-artistic life thus became the dominating element of her output. Correlated—be it painted or sculpted—the various views of femininity are a tale of the artist herself: a liberated, attractive temptress, a mother—Korn was never to play that role—reading the clues, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, we enter into a space where it is hard to separate the artistic from real life.

Loving Literature: A Cultural History

Loving Literature: A Cultural History

Book Review: The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth: Richard C. Steiner, Disembodied Souls: The Nefesh in Israel and Kindred Spirits in the Ancient Near East, with an Appendix on the Katumuwa Inscription

Book Review: The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth: Richard C. Steiner, <i>Disembodied Souls: The Nefesh in Israel and Kindred Spirits in the Ancient Near East, with an Appendix on the Katumuwa Inscription</i>

Let's Celebrate READ IN Week!

Let's Celebrate READ IN Week!

Meister Eckhart and C. G. Jung: Mysticism, Individuation, and the Transformation of the God-Image

Meister Eckhart (1260–1326 c.e.) was a profound thinker and preacher who pushed the boundaries of conventional church teachings by focusing on the individual and his or her personal experience of God, as opposed to dogma and ritual. This focus is consistent with Jung's belief that one had to personally experience the objective, living psyche/Self. As supported by the many references to Eckhart throughout his writings, Jung considered Meister Eckhart to be a kindred spirit. Jung even states that Eckhart was the first person to ever view God psychologically and observe that humanity affects God just as God affects humanity. Eckhart's theology and mysticism revolve around a few key concepts, including the notion of a “mysticism of the ground,” and stated that when God is fully in a person, he or she shares the same ground. Such a description also serves us in analytical psychology, for it is when the ego discovers the Self that we become “grounded” in something much larger than ourselves, and life takes on new meaning and authenticity.

Bernardin and Bergoglio: What the Cardinal’s Legacy Offers to a Church Led by Pope Francis

As the papacy of Francis unfolds the Church is experiencing a time of rebirth, grounded in our long tradition but with shifting emphases and fresh outlooks. Seminaries and other graduate schools of study may struggle to find frames of reference in which to structure education and formation to fit these shifts. They would do well to revisit the work of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, in particular his Consistent Ethic of Life and Common Ground Initiative, as a way forward during this springtime of renewed interest in the church and its relevance to contemporary issues. The two men seem to be kindred spirits, as well as products of their eras. Bernardin’s work will need updating, but it provides a solid foundation from which to begin the implementation of Francis’s vision for a church at the service of Christ’s mission today.

From the February 17 Revolution to Benghazi: rewriting history for political gain

ABSTRACTIn February 2011, peaceful demonstrations in Benghazi and other Libyan cities in support of additional housing, more jobs, and a better way life quickly turned into demands for regime change after security forces employed deadly force in an effort to subdue the protesters. As the February 17 Revolution unfolded, the better equipped and trained security forces of the Qaddafi regime soon bested inexperienced and poorly armed rebel units, threatening to retake Benghazi and engage in acts of retribution similar to those the regime had employed in the past to punish acts of dissent or revolt. In response, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973, authorising member states to take ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians under threat of attack. The policies of the Qaddafi regime in the years before the February 17 Revolution and in the early weeks of the revolt thoroughly justified the UN-supported military intervention that began in mid-March 2011; nevertheless, some academics, journalists, and politicians have distorted events in this time frame to argue that it was not a model intervention but a model failure. Kindred spirits have seized on a contrived, misleading analysis to challenge the foreign policy legacy of the Obama administration and the role in Libya of then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Historical revisionism enjoys a long and cherished tradition; however, a selective rendering of events for political gain undermines the democratic process in both Libya and the USA and threatens to distort future policy decisions on Libya and other countries, replacing authoritarian regimes with democracies.

The misnomers of spiritual ‘directing’ and ‘coaching’

The article considers the terms ‘directing’, as used in spiritual directing, and ‘coaching’ related to its general use, but spiritual ‘coaching’, in particular. Directing and coaching are said to be misnomers that communicate directivity instead of primarily being situated in a non‑directive style of engagement. Within the author’s theoretical paradigm, spiritual accompaniment and spiritual, narrative informed, coaching were said to be kindred spirits. Both emphasise experience, broadly adhere to a facilitative style of engagement, and do not subscribe to a deficit model, aiming to fix or remedy, in the first instance, least of all attempting to be an expert on a person’s life. Attention is paid to what potentially contributes to the said misnomers. The article concludes that misnomers cause barriers to inter‑professional inquiry and practice.

Free Verse by Sarah Dooley (review)

Reviewed by: Free Verse by Sarah Dooley Karen Coats Dooley, Sarah Free Verse. Putnam, 2016 [352p] ISBN 978-0-399-16503-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 6-9 Twelve-year-old Sasha has suffered many losses: her mother left, her father died in a mining accident, and her brother, who was ten years older and gave up his dreams of travel and college to take care of her, has now died fighting a fire. Fortunately, she finds herself in the care of a kind, patient foster mother, and she finds a kindred spirit in her second cousin Mikey, a quiet, sad eight-year-old; when Mikey’s dad is late coming home after an accident in the mine, Sasha convinces Mikey to run away with her so they don’t have to face the worst, but their efforts go awry when Sasha is caught by the police and Mikey disappears. The search for Mikey goes on for months, during which Sasha finds refuge in assignments from her poetry club. The story mounts a quiet defense of the nobility of broken people, particularly men, who hold on when all seems lost and sacrifice much out of love for their children. The hardships and grief that seed the characters’ lives don’t grow into bitterness, and Sasha learns that, for all of her brother’s plans and desires to leave their West Virginia town, plans and desires that she was expected to share, home is where you make your family. Sasha’s quietly moving poems, included in an interstitial section designed to resemble a poetry notebook of experiments with various forms, trace the evolution of her appreciation for what she has and her understanding that one must find one’s own way to wholeness after loss. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Marcel Proust in the Light of William James: In Search of a Lost Source by Marilyn M. Sachs

his philosophical attitudes; one might consider, for example, Epicurean notions of the relation between order and chaos. Louisiana State University Gregory B. Stone Sachs, Marilyn, M. Marcel Proust in the Light of William James: In Search of a Lost Source. Lanham: Lexington, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7391-8162-1. Pp. v + 311. $100. Proust studies abound with books that unearth the innumerable literary and philosophical works which influenced À la recherche du temps perdu. Sachs concludes succinctly: “There can be little doubt that James’s works inspired Proust’s modernity and assist interpretation of his novel” (267). Sachs makes a convincing if somewhat uneven case that James’s theories on memory and human consciousness, published in works such as The Principles of Psychology (1891) and Psychology: Briefer Course (1892) could have influenced a young Proust studying under philosophy professor Alphonse Darlu, or the mature author, an avid reader of scientific journals that discussed James’s theories, both directly in translation or as filtered through philosophers such as Henri Bergson. James was, as Sachs optimistically puts it, in “l’air du temps” (xiii) in which Proust lived and wrote. James’s potential influence on some of À la recherche’s most Proustian themes has indeed been neglected and Sachs does convince that James and Proust are kindred spirits. However, even if Proust is a Jamesian novelist and James a Proustian psychologist, it is hard to give much credence to conclusions that suggest, for example, that the Saint-Loup table-jumping scene’s evolution from Jean Santeuil to À la recherche“has undergone a Jamesian transformation in which past experience is seen anew, in a process and using language that illustrates the relational fringe”(91). Was it really “Proust’s exploitation of the artistic potential inherent in the Jamesian ‘fringe’ of relations that allowed him to develop his mature style” (92)? This is simply impossible to prove based on the evidence Sachs musters. In addition to overstating her case at times, Sachs also distracts the reader with numerous typos in spellcheck- “corrected” French quotations and a final chapter cluttered with clumsy repetitions that leave Sachs stealing her own thunder and the reader begging for better proofreading . On one conspicuous occasion,Sachs cites Proust’s famous thoughts on reading in Combray (I, 84) indirectly from Dorrit Cohn’s Transparent Mind, an inexplicable shortcut for a critical work otherwise given to quoting Proust in French and English (61).Sachs is at her best in comparing Jamesian language to Proustian literary representations of experience and memory. In this regard, her reading of standard Proustian themes and tropes“in the light of William James”deepens our appreciation of Proust, even if the topics illuminated are very familiar. For example, she demonstrates how reading James on “voluntary and involuntary attention” (107–14) sheds light on numerous aesthetic lessons Proust’s narrator learns, either from an artist such as Elstir, or a lover such as Swann, whose syndrome Sachs sums up perfectly in this Jamesian 230 FRENCH REVIEW 89.3 Reviews 231 inspired gem: “And Swann and the narrator are riding the waves of obsession, the outer limit of attention” (113). Her discussion of James’s thoughts on “Habit” (114– 26),“association and metaphor”(126–38),and his concept of the“fringes”that surround associations (127) are excellent examples of how her Jamesian inspired light, while not entirely novel, renews our reading of Proust through its brightness and intensity. University of Central Arkansas Phillip Bailey Savoie, Chantal. Les femmes de lettres canadiennes-françaises au tournant du XXe siècle. Québec: Nota bene, 2014. ISBN 978-2-89518-497-3. Pp. 243. $26 Can. Savoie focuses her study on a nexus of factors at the turn of the twentieth century that, as she claims, created for French-Canadian women the conditions favorable to writing. Her assertion is intriguing given that the works of the more than one hundred writers signing under a woman’s name in this period (1895–1933) were, in great part and particularly in the early years, intentionally, almost embarrassingly, modest in terms of literary ambitions: contes, causeries, saynètes, short poems, children’s literature, religious literature, moralizing literature, etc. Savoie convincingly presents the rapid move from...

(Mis)reading Ibsen: Chinese Noras On and Off the Stage and Nora in Her Chinese Husband’s Ancestral Land of the 1930s as Reimagined for the Globalized World Today

The curtain rises to reveal a stage in semi-darkness--with spotlight on a young female Chinese musician upstage, dressed in red and playing jingerhu, a two-stringed traditional Chinese music instrument, and another young Chinese actress in full dan (female role) costume singing a traditional Peking opera song. As this short overture transits into the opening scene of the play, we see a Chinese home of a yesteryear decor, simply furnished, and two men in their forties, one dressed in a long-sleeved Chinese jacket and one in suit and tie. The man in traditional Chinese attire, Han Ermao, writes on a scroll of red paper with ink and brush while the man dressed in Western clothing, Ruan Ke, comments on Han's calligraphy. Apparently it is the eve of chunjie (spring festival), the Chinese New Year. Enters a woman in her thirties, a European woman in silky traditional Chinese dress, returning from holiday shopping, who greets the two men in Chinese with noticeable foreign accent: Nimen hao (How're you guys). Han, also speaking Chinese, asks Nora to come and take a look at the red scrolls he and Ruan Ke have written and adjudicate whose calligraphy is better. She praises both and hugs and kisses Han who admonishes her, half-jokingly: We the Chinese are not used to this [public display of affection], a habit of yours you can't rid of even after this many years [in China]. Thus begins the 1998 production (reproduced in 2001 and 2006) of Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House mounted by China's Central Experimental Theater (zhongyan shiyan huaju yuan) in Beijing, in which Nora follows her Chinese husband Han Ermao (Chinese transliteration of Helmer) to his ancestral land of the 1930s, further complicating the theme of individualism and gender equality with interlingual, intercultural, and transnational twists and tensions. (1) The reception history of Ibsen in China has been well documented by scholars both in and outside China, especially the reception history up to the early 1990s. (2) One of the recurrent themes in such studies is that for a long while, especially in the early decades of the twentieth century, Ibsen's influence in China had been more in the realm of social reform than in the imaginary world of the theatre. In the last decade or so, there has been a backlash in China, not against Ibsen himself, but against members of the May Fourth (New Culture Movement) generation such as Hu Shi (1891-1962). Hu Shi and kindred spirits had introduced Ibsen to China, appropriating the Western playwright as a champion of sorts, and making Nora, the heroine of A Doll's House, a rallying cry for the cause of women's liberation--a gross (wudu), as some scholars have charged recently, that reduced the real and true (zhenshi, zhenzheng) self of one of the greatest modern playwrights into disjointed fragments and misused him most egregiously. (3) It would be tempting to offer a deconstructionist truism that all reading is misreading (4) by way of apologizing for Hu Shi and his May Fourth generation kindred spirits, which according to Edward Said would amount to abrogation of a critic's responsibility because it is perfectly possible to judge misreadings (as they occur) as part of a historical transfer of ideas and theories from one setting to another. (5) If, for the purpose of this discussion, we think of Ibsen--his life, career, and entire oeuvre, dramatic and otherwise--as a text, to borrow from Harold Bloom, it would prove only inevitable that he would invite and engender many strong misreadings instead of being easily reduced to simple or simplistic readings. In the case of Hu Shi and other Ibsen enthusiasts of the May Fourth generation, their misreadings of Ibsen were not motivated by of influence, to rebel against their literary peres and stake out their own place in literary history with their creative supremacy, but by an acute anxiety for the existential crisis China was facing then and by an acute sense of urgency for the renewal of its people and culture. …

Wish by Barbara O’Connor

Reviewed by: Wish by Barbara O’Connor Elizabeth Bush O’Connor, Barbara Wish. Farrar, 2016 [240p] ISBN 978-0-374-30273-3 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 3-5 Charlie Reese has been sent from the big city, Raleigh, to the little burg, Colby, North Carolina, to stay with Aunt Bertha and Uncle Gus until Mama gets “back on her feet.” Despite the warm welcome she is given, Charlie still manages to find plenty to complain about: the other fifth-graders are squirrel-eating hillbillies; her older sister, Jackie, has a better berth with a friend back home; canning jars are stored in her bedroom; Sunday school is boring; and the only kid who wants to be friends, Howard Odom, has a weird limp. It’s clear that her daily wishing routine (stars, clovers, ladybugs, you name it) isn’t getting her what she wants. Bertha and Gus are relentless in their loving care, though, and Howard is relentless in his quest for friendship, and there’s a stray dog in whom Charlie finds a kindred spirit, so even with her bad temper and impulsive tendency to hurt others’ feelings, she is destined to come around. O’Connor again finds the sweet spot for young readers who are beyond early chapter books but not quite ready for the cynicism and/or complexity of much tween-into-teen lit. Bertha, Gus, and the Odoms are certainly awash in goodness, but their big-heartedness never devolves into sentimentality. Moreover, Charlie’s tribulations are grounded in reality: Dad may get out of jail, but he’ll never stay out of trouble; Mom’s depression isn’t going away. Even the dog is just a dog—a nice dog, a comforting dog, but just a dog. It won’t take much guesswork for readers to figure out what Charlie wishes for through every superstitious ritual she can muster; the family she wants so badly is right there in Colby, NC. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

“Meine Welt beginnt bei den Dingen”: Rainer Maria Rilke und die Erfahrung der Dinge by Bernhard Marx

Reviewed by: “Meine Welt beginnt bei den Dingen”: Rainer Maria Rilke und die Erfahrung der Dinge by Bernhard Marx Francis Michael Sharp Bernhard Marx, “Meine Welt beginnt bei den Dingen”: Rainer Maria Rilke und die Erfahrung der Dinge. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015. 245pp. The examination of the creative process underlying Rilke’s lyrical production is at the heart of this speculative but ultimately exhilarating study. The citation in the title stems from a letter the poet wrote in 1922, but his fascination with “things” and their central role in his poetics—“things” both animate and inanimate, perceived through all doors of human sensory perception—goes back more than two decades, to his first journey to Russia in 1899. Up to this point, Rilke’s overpowering existential conviction was one of isolation, of [End Page 123] estrangement from a hostile world. His experience in Russia liberated him from this “prejudice” (“Befangenheit” 145), and his increasing existential intimacy with the “world of things” led to the feeling of self in his poetry that the author describes in the following way: “Rilke ‘präsentiert’ sich mitten unter den Dingen als ein Teil in dem ‘großen Orchester’ des Lebens” (149). Bernhard Marx brings the poet’s own musings in his poetry, essays, and letters together with the thoughtful analyses of a group of scholars, visual artists, other poets, writers, and philosophers. While the very number of footnotes—720—underlines the “world of things” as central to Rilke’s lyrical concerns, the distinct advantage for the reader of this voluminous poetic/scholarly exchange is the constant rephrasing and reformulation of a process often resistant to a cast of mind accustomed to a clear distinction between subject and object. With the help of the mutually clarifying and illustrative points of view in this larger conversation—as well as some familiarity with meditative language and magical thinking—Rilke’s reflections on the process gradually come into focus as “eine Poetik des teilhabenden Blicks” (10). In the first of his major chapters, Marx emphasizes Rilke’s vision of mutuality between artist and “things,” of a shared rather than a mutually alienated existence. He situates his vision of “ein wechselseitiges Bezogensein zwischen Mensch & Ding” (15) within the context of the “language crisis” in the early twentieth century. Rilke sought to imagine and formulate a bridging relationship to counter the seemingly increasing alienation between the artist and the world of “things” described in the writing of other writers of the era. For clarification at this point, Marx calls on another major poet closely associated with the “crisis” at the time, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The Austrian discounts any Rilkean reference to “things-in-themselves” and emphasizes that his interest and intent was the “realization” or “visualization” (“Vergegenwärtigung”) of “things” in his lyrical works. This “realization” took place in what Rilke called the “Weltinnenraum”—an internal creative space of empathy, the site of “reciprocal relatedness” where the metamorphosis of Ding into Kunst-Ding takes place. An often-quoted line from a poem written in 1914 is perhaps the most clearly expressed example of the active response of the world of “Dinge” to the poet’s empathetic gaze: “Es winkt zu Fühlung fast aus allen Dingen. . . .” Later on in the poem, Rilke captures in language the site of this point of permeability and reciprocity: [End Page 124] Durch alle Wesen reicht der eine Raum:Weltinnenraum. Die Vögel fliegen still Durch uns hindurch. . . . (37, emphasis in original) The author builds further on his carefully argued and richly documented first chapter with four shorter excursuses that deal with Rodin, Cezanne, Ponge, and Sartre in an effort to place Rilke’s poetics in a larger international and aesthetic context. In the sculptor Rodin, the poet found a kindred spirit whose works reflected that “Weltinnenraum” where the artist’s intense experience breathes artistic life into what appear to be insensate objects or Dinge. Rilke conceived of the resulting work of art as a “Kunst-Ding,” one whose essence is marked by a shared existential realm enveloping them both. A key conceptualization for Marx is “Poetik der Teilhabe.” At an early stage of his book, he explains this phrase in the following...

Marie Ponsot’s Ever-Fixéd Mark

Marie Ponsot’s Ever-Fixéd Mark David Yezzi (bio) Every poet has her tutelary gods—those guardians, daimons, or genii of place that guide her and watch over her. Often, though not always, these are fellow writers—colleagues or eminent predecessors conjured by a Lararium of photos tucked on bookshelves or tacked above the writing desk. Their familiar faces keep watch, radiating encouragement and occasional censure, but always with an offering of fellowship, founded on a shared experience of craft and cunning. Such kindred spirits offer proof that many have spent and others will spend their lives in the pursuit of the peculiar activity of writing poems. They, too, overcame fallow periods and the loss of faith, in order to fashion something striking out of words, something life-filled and, perhaps, even lasting. Such household deities offer courage. Many such guiding spirits peer out from the poems of Marie Ponsot who, now in her tenth decade, has been recording their voices and lives in a half-dozen books of poetry, beginning with True Minds in 1956 and up through her most recent volume, Easy from 2009. (Her gods have also seen her through dozens of books translated from the French, including her brilliant versions of the Fables of La Fontaine.) Ponsot’s women—for her poem-portraits are almost always women—lead by their example. These mothers, daughters, teachers, lovers, bohemians, adventurers, scholars, and poets act out of a fierce resolve to face down successive challenges, both the ordinary and extraordinary. Let the fearless Eunice B. Winkless, photographed midair on horseback in 1904, serve as an example of the extraordinary. Winkless’s daring speaks to anyone—parent, traveler, artist, teacher—who is called upon repeatedly to take a leap of faith. Imagine the scene: it is the Fourth of July in Pueblo Colorado. Eunice Winkless rides past a crowd of eager spectators atop a tall white mare, her Gibson-girl hair swept up high on her head and tied with a black ribbon. Ponsot’s poem fixes her there: Regal as Iphigenia taking the upward course in a drift of white eyelet muslin she rides the animal horse. Merrily fife & drum pace their climb. Women think prayers, set to not-look, just in case. Men do not snigger, forget [End Page 506] their faces/ladies/bets, and stare once she reaches the platform. The crowd—women preparing to look away, men staring unflinchingly—has come to see a woman ride a flying horse (Pegasus being, as Ponsot knows, the symbol of poetry) out into thin air. What runs through her mind as stories below her, “[t]he pool glints like a tame star on the ground”? Before she has time to ruminate, the decisive moment arrives: Out & groundless horse & girl drop flying clear of equilibrium Her body jockeying air touches only bridle & with one knee, horse, as nothing to spare they head for the hope they head in dread in dread for the pool. Then follows a stanza break, like a caught breath, after which Winkless’s relief mingles with rue: To herself she says among her wet hair, “Did it again. Damn fool.” A photo of the horse and rider, caught halfway between the platform and the pool, hangs in the Smithsonian, but Ponsot’s act of ekphrasis does more than exhibit the scene or breathe life into the airborne heroine. An italic passage, which ends the poem, brings Ponsot herself into the frame: I need her dreadful ease, its immense self-reference. I watch to catch her hand-span skill addressthe radius of her practice then guess, self-tested, at its circumference. Such immense skill may only be guessed at: here is as powerful a figure for the artist as the bell-casting scene in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev or the life-or-death fabulations of Scheherazade. The trick rider and the poet belong to the same guild; both know that in order to get the job done you have to leap. The story has a telling footnote, one which could not have been lost on Ponsot: According to a squib in Time magazine, Winkless “accepted being a part of a horse dive as a dare...

African women of the screen at the digital turn

When I conceptualised the Sisters of the Screen project as a book and film, I envisioned an “imagined community” of kindred spirits, a “sisterhood” where the screen was their ultimate point of convergence. The screen is where their images are read; whether it’s a movie screen, television set, video monitor, computer screen, tablet or mobile phone, for a director, producer, film festival organiser, actor, critic or spectator the screen is the ultimate site where the moving image is viewed, interpreted and understood. With the phenomenal development of screen culture as a result of the digital turn, I return to the “screen” as a conceptual framework that integrates screen media, and their associated devices and technologies; hence, the concept “African women of the screen” as the organising principle. This report examines the impact of the digital turn on African women of the screen, how their cinematic gaze has evolved, developed and transformed with the evolution of new technologies such as the Internet and, in particular, the emergence of social media.

Kenneth Kernaghan and Canadian Public Administration: Editor's Note and Remembrances

Kenneth Kernaghan and Canadian Public Administration: Editor's Note and Remembrances

American Strays

American Strays Joseph D. Haske (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The artistic, literary treatment of working-class and poor characters is, by no means, something new to American literature. In fact, some of our greatest novels, plays, poems, and stories tackle the plight of the working class and poor, with no less canonical masterpieces than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Moby Dick (1851) as prominent examples of working-class literature in its broad scope. What is unusual in America’s rich literary history is a high-quality rendering of literature about the working class and poverty-stricken by writers who have actually lived through such experiences themselves. Middle and upper class writers are often enticed by and prompted to write about the struggles of the poor and working class, addressing their subjects from the lens of outside observer and treating these characters and settings as a sort of study or social experiment. In contemporary America, however, writers with poor and working-class roots are taking on this task in relatively large numbers, and doing so boldly, skillfully, and memorably. The recent publication of Stray Dogs: Writing from the Other America (2014) showcases many of these writers and there are other similar writers out there contributing to this movement as well. Such like-minded writers have gained significant momentum lately, and we’re beginning to earn the attention of critics and a broader base of readers. A writer doesn’t necessarily have to come from working-class or poor backgrounds to write about the poor and working class, but accomplished writers who are able to effectively incorporate their own relevant experience into their work potentially offer another level of understanding, complexity and breathe new life into the larger scope of working-class/poor writing. With this movement in its current boom, we owe it to certain writers who have historically stood out as anomalies: predecessors from poor and working-class backgrounds who address the concerns of their class of origin honestly and accurately, rather than conforming to the establishment’s almost requisite sterilization of characters, style and settings. The best of the bunch shamelessly remove that comfortable distance from the truth that makes writing more “palatable” for the masses, the critics and squeamish readers of literature, and these literary innovators have encouraged us to do the same. To better understand this recent trend in American working-class writing, an examination of two working-class literary figures, Jack London and the contemporary author, Paul Ruffin, might be the place to start. On the surface, it may seem that the two writers have little in common: London is associated with the Pacific coast, Alaska, and the Klondike, while most of Ruffin’s work is set in the south, primarily Mississippi and east Texas. However, beyond their obvious regional and temporal differences, the two actually share much more in common than one might expect. Both are accomplished essayists, poets, and novelists and both might be at their best with short fiction. They were also born into similarly humble backgrounds: Ruffin, in his own words, the “son of a toilet-seat-assembly-line worker,” and London, the son of a poor, unwed mother in the Bay area of California. Although nearly a century separates the work of London and Ruffin, the two writers often appear to be kindred spirits, if not stylistically, at least in theme, sentiment and in their adept insiders’ treatment of the working class and poor characters in their work. Since London’s heyday, American literature has experienced the stylistic contributions of Hemingway, Faulkner, O’Connor, Caldwell and numerous other prominent twentieth century authors, so London’s and Ruffin’s respective prose styles are as distinct as a reader might expect, at least on the surface. However, London, although overtly political in most of his essays and a staunch, outspoken proponent of socialism, employs more subtle approaches to the plight of the poor and working class in his fiction. Similarly to Ruffin, he craftily exposes the American underbelly objectively, conveying the pitfalls of life in society, and ultimately calling on the reader to make any moral assessment. With London’s and Ruffin’s respective fiction, objectivity outweighs...