BLUE SONG For Ervin Beck, upon his retirement Walking down the west side of this hill through maple and beech, you see the river beyond the river grass, wind blowing along its top like a child’s hand as he waves goodbye for…
IN THIS ISSUE The essays in this issue of MQR were originally read as papers at “Mennonite/s Writing: An International Conference” held October 24-27, 2002 at Goshen College, co-sponsored by Conrad Grebel University College and the English Department of Goshen College. The essays contribute to the relatively new field…
CONTENTS OF VOLUME LXXVII 2003 JANUARY Author Addresses 3 In This Issue 5 Mennonite World Conference, 1925-2000: From Euro-American Conference to Worldwide Communion John A. Lapp and Ed van Straten 7 A Mennonite-Christian View of Suffering: The Case of Russian Mennonites in the 1930s…
BOOK REVIEWS The Case of Lena S. By David Bergen. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 2002. Pp. 286. $32.99. David Bergen’s third novel takes it title from a poem penned by its main character, a teenager, Mason Crowe, whose poetic sensibility and emotional intimacy with his mother make him seem mature…
Harry Loewen: A Tribute Paul Tiessen When I arrived as an undergraduate at the Mennonite Brethren College of Arts in Winnipeg in 1964-65, only a year or two after Rudy Wiebe had been delicately shown the road out of town, I did have a vague inkling that ?the sixties? had…
The Construction of Mennonite/Amish Character in Novels by John Updike and Denis Johnson DANIEL W. LEHMAN* Abstract: Mennonite and Amish characters play small but crucial roles in the best-known novels of John Updike and Denis Johnson, two celebrated contemporary writers in the United States. At their best, both Updike and…
Resolving Dualisms in David Bergen’s Sitting Opposite My Brother ERVIN BECK* Abstract: The short stories in David Bergen’s first book of fiction Sitting Opposite My Brother tend to offer similar sets of characters, narratives and resolutions. The stories often juxtapose male characters of opposite spiritual conditions: one being a…
?Sloughing off Ribs’: Revealing The Second Sex in Julia Kasdorf’s Poetry BETH MARTIN BIRKY* Abstract: This essay examines the way Julia Kasdorf’s latest collection of poetry Eve’s Striptease maps a female artist’s integration of body and desire and suggests the personal and creative power to be found in formulating…
Yorifumi Yaguchi: International Mennonite Poet and Prophet of Peace WILBUR BIRKY* Abstract: Yorifumi Yaguchi is a leading Mennonite poet, both in English and Japanese. He is best known in the West for his thirty poems in Three Mennonite Poets (Good Books, 1986), but his published work in English includes nearly…
Three Women Poets and the Beginnings of Mennonite Poetry in the U.S: Anna Ruth Ediger Baehr, Jane Rohrer, Jean Janzen ANN HOSTETLER* Abstract: This paper explores from a cultural studies perspective the pioneering contributions of three women poets’Anna Ruth Ediger Baehr, Jane Rohrer, and Jean Janzen’to a growing twentieth-century…
