The forthcoming issue (#87) of the minnesota review features some pretty spectacular poets and fiction writers with bright writing futures ahead of them. As a member of the tmr team who reads submissions, I’ve been wondering what has already happened and, of course, what will happen in the future in regards to the careers of those who submit to this publication.
Bearing my concern and curiosity for our contributors in mind, I dug back into the minnesota review’s time capsule and pulled out a small piece of history: The Fall 1976 publication of the minnesota review (a $2 investment at the time, if you’re wondering). Inside, I found the names of the writerly souls who so kindly submitted to and had their work published in the minnesota review some forty years ago. What’d I do with these names? The natural millennial thing: I (semi) cyber-stalked. Here’s what I found:
Stanley Aronowitz (Enzensberger on Mass Culture/A Review Essay)
Ding, ding! Found some things! A professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, Aronowitz has published numerous books in his field. Since publishing in tmr (when, at the same time, he’d just published his book, False Promises), he’s published at least 26 more books.
Frederick Buell (To the Season, and: Poem for a Winter Night)
An educator as well, Buell teaches English and cultural studies at Queens College. A poet and literary critic, Buell’s works include National Culture and the New Global System; W.H. Auden as a Social Poet; and From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century. He has also published a collection of poetry, Full Summer. At the time of publishing in tmr, he had published the work Theseus and Other Poems.
Helen Degen Cohen (Boardwalk at Daytona Beach)
A Polish Holocaust survivor who was kept in hiding during World War II and who later settled with her parents in Chicago, Degen Cohen enjoyed a long career as a writer and educator. An acclaimed writer of poetry, short stories, and novels, her awards include the Paladin Award for extraordinary long-term contribution to Illinois, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, First Prize in British Stand Magazine’s International fiction competition, Three Illinois Arts Council Literary awards-Poetry and Fiction, Indiana University Writer’s Conference Award, and fellowships to Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Ragdale Foundation. In addition, she toured the State of Illinois as an Illinois Artist-in-Residence, and cofounded the RHINO Poetry Journal.
Victor Contoski (Some Contemporary European Poets)
Another professor, Contoski taught at the University of Kansas, and continued his writing career publishing works like Von Goom’s Gambit, and editing a book of poetry by poets of Polish ancestry, entitled Blood of Their Blood.
Terry Eagleton (The Novel and Revolution review)
A prominent British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual, Eagleton earned the title of Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, and has published over forty books.
Dan Georgakas (John Williams at 49: An Interview)
An American poet and historian, Georgakas has published numerous works, including his most recent The Cineaste Interviews and Encyclopedia of the American Left.
Albert Goldbarth (Heroics of Appearance Recalled, and: Ellen’s)
Like a lot of these other achievers, Goldbarth’s got quite the resume, including his publications, To Be Read in 500 Years: Poems; The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems 1972-2007; Saving Lives; and Heaven and Earth: A Cosmology. Goldbarth is the only poet to have received the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry twice. Currently, he serves as the Adele Davis Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Wichita State University.
Elliot Krieger (The Dialectics of Shakespeare’s Comedies)
Krieger’s works include his first novel, Exiles, and his first published short story, “Canton Pepper” won an O. Henry Award.
Henry Malone (Political Poster, and: The Automobile)
Malone’s published work including Portals to Cleansing, Shadow Boxing, Shame Identity Thief, and God’s Miracle Land.
Barbara Moore (Getting Old)
Moore’s novels include Hard On the Road; The Fever Called Living; Something on the Wind; The Doberman Wore Black; and The Wolf Whispered Death.
Heiner Müller (Love Story)
A German dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director, Müller won a multitude of awards and honors for his works, which include Der Lohndrücker (The Scab), Wolokolamsker Chaussee (Volokolamsk Highway) Parts I–V, Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten (Despoiled Shore Medea Material Landscape with Argonauts), Philoktet (Philoctetes), Zement (Cement), Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture aka Explosion of a memory) and Quartett.
Larry Rubin (Lessons of the Sea: On the Sun Deck)
A retired English professor of Georgia Tech, Rubin has published hundreds of poems in literary magazines. He was presented the Life Membership Award by the College English Association in 2001.
Scott Sanders (Hunt)
A Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Sanders has most recently published works including Divine Animal: A Novel; Earth Works: Selected Essays; and a Conservationist Manifesto; and also children’s books including Auorra Means Dawn, Warm as Wool; and The Floating House.
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (In the Used Clothes Shop)
A noted novelist and poet who was a professor of English at Brooklyn College for over thirty years, Schaeffer won numerous national writing awards and contributed book reviews for the New York Times. Her published work includes fourteen novels, a collection of short stories, six volumes of poetry, and two children’s books.
William J. Schafer (Truman Nelson: Heeding the Voices of Revolution)
Schafer’s work includes The Truman Nelson Reader, The Original Jelly Roll Blues, Brass Bands and New Orleans Jazz, Mapping the Godzone, and Art of Ragtime: Form and Meaning of an Original Black American Art.
James Scully (North End, and: Halfway Into Paradise)
Scully has written translations, essays, and published works of poetry, such as Angel in Flames: Selected Poems & Translations 1967-2011; and Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice. In addition, he was the founding editor of the Art on the Line series.
Joanne Seltzer (The Gift)
Seltzer’s work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies including The Village Voice, Hadassah Magazine, Waterways, The Maine Scholar, and When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple.
Harold Witt (Summum Bonum, and: The Conformist)
Witt’s published three collections of poetry, including Winesburg by the Sea; The Snow Prince Poems and Collages; and American Lit.
Dig what you see? Want your name to be cyber-stalked in 2056? Send us your stuff!
Leslie Jernegan is a fiction writer in Virginia Tech’s MFA program. Outside of her writerly pursuits, she travels, practica su español, plays in the great outdoors, drinks good beers with good(ish)—but really great—people, and talks about her love for her Wisco home.
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