A Delicate Aggression

by David O. Dowling

  52. Vance Bourjaily to John C. Gerber, 17 January 1966, RIWW SCUI.

  53. Jerome Klinkowitz, The Vonnegut Statement (New York: Panther, 1975), 15.

  54. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to John C. Gerber, 11 July 1965, RIWW SCUI.

  55. Vonnegut, Letters, 116.

  56. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 28.

  57. Schaeffer and Olsen, 182.

  58. Schaeffer and Olsen, 190.

  59. Kurt Vonnegut to Stephen Wilbers, January 1976, Stephen Wilbers Project, RIWW SCUI.

  60. Kurt Vonnegut to John C. Gerber, 11 July 1965, RIWW SCUI.

  61. Vonnegut, Letters, 116.

  62. Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, ed. Daniel Simon (New York: Seven Stories, 2005), 41.

  63. Vonnegut, Letters, 78.

  64. Schaeffer and Olsen, 196.

  65. Vonnegut, Letters, 398.

  66. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 18.

  67. Vonnegut, Letters, 121.

  68. Vonnegut, Letters, 73.

  69. W. D. Snodgrass, “Mentors, Fomenters, and Tormenters,” in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 144.

  70. Vonnegut, Letters, 132.

  71. Schaeffer and Olsen, 218–219.

  72. Schaeffer and Olsen, 199–200.

  73. Schaeffer and Olsen, 121.

  74. Connie Brothers, interview by David Dowling, Iowa City, Iowa, 2 December 2015.

  75. Schaeffer and Olsen, 121.

  76. Schaeffer and Olsen, 196.

  77. Vonnegut, Letters, 117.

  78. Vonnegut, Letters, 82.

  79. His agent with the Cosby Bureau International sent a letter saying, “At Kurt Vonnegut’s request, I am returning $2,000 to you” as repayment for his late 1960s loan drawn from Workshop funds; Janet L. Cosby to Frank Conroy, 14 April 1989, RIWW SCUI, Series V, Box 1, Director’s Files, access under permission of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

  80. Vonnegut, Letters, 124.

  81. Vonnegut, Letters, 139–140.

  82. David H. Lynn, “Editor’s Notes,” Kenyon Review 18.3–4 (Summer–Autumn 1996), 1.

  83. Vonnegut, Letters, 130.

  84. Vonnegut, Letters, 119.

  85. Gail Godwin, “Kurt Vonnegut: Waltzing with the Black Crayon,” in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), 219–220.

  86. Schaeffer and Olsen, 155.

  87. Schaeffer and Olsen, 236.

  88. Anis Shivani, “Iowa Writers’ Workshop Graduate Spills It All: Interview with John McNally, Author of After the Workshop,” Huffington Post, 25 May 2011, web.

  89. Schaeffer and Olsen, 155.

  90. Schaeffer and Olsen, 190.

  91. Godwin, 222.

  92. The only extant version of Vonnegut’s profile of Conroy is a fax he sent to the Workshop in 1990, which reads as follows.

  FRANK CONROY I have known for a long time (having tried so hard to play the clarinet and the piano that musicians are in some way radically different from the rest of us). My friend Frank Conroy is a jazz pianist. (And a good one.) It was once explained to me (by a man who talks through his hat even more than I do) that musicians process music with that part of their brain meant to be used for ordinary language (for routine blah, blah, blah, Chinese, or French, or English, or whatnot). Witness Mozart (as fluent in music when a toddler as other toddlers in Salzburg were in German). If that isn’t true about musicians, I don’t want to hear so. It is too pretty a piece of information for me to do without. Which brings us to Conroy and Fats Waller. (Where else could we be at this point?) Conroy is as arch and dainty at a keyboard as Waller was. He also writes that way. (And also mentions Waller.)

  Which brings us to dealing with unhappy memories by means of art. (Where else could we be at this point?) One can safely assume (I assume) that Waller (being both fat and black in America) had many unhappy memories. (Some of them probably are no more than five minutes old). So does Frank Conroy, although he is tall and white and skinny. I know this from what he chooses to write about. (Peace be to Philip Roth and Erica Jong, et al. who waste so much time denying that they are characters in their fictions.)

  Yes, and Conroy, whether writing or playing the piano, by force of will and talent review bad memories in tones and cadences which I said before are arch and dainty. (Why shouldn’t I repeat myself if something I’ve said is good and true?) One thinks (I think) of all the jazz musicians who let agony show through the rips in their otherwise seamless performances, or even played nothing but rips and never mind the fabric. (Rips? Riffs? The same?) Some say that was what made them great. But Waller achieved greatness without doing that. (Not even when playing and singing “Black and Blue.”)

  Miracle.

  I am entitled to call Conroy childlike, since he is eleven years my junior. But I would call him that even if he were my great-grandfather. You should see him when he plays the piano. He is like a child (Waller as a toddler?), amazed by the enchanting sounds he makes so easily. I have never watched him write. (Has anybody?) But he must be similarly amazed. (Almost goofy with delight).

  Kurt Vonnegut to Frank Conroy, 23 April 1990, RIWW SCUI, Series V, Box 1, Director’s Files, access under permission of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

  93. Correspondence of Kurt Vonnegut, 20 May 1988, RIWW SCUI.

  94. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 122.

  9. Infidels: Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo

  1. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships, 17 May 2005, American Public Media.

  2. Renee H. Shea, “A Conversation with Sandra Cisneros,” in Sandra Cisneros in the Classroom: “Do Not Forget to Reach,” ed. Carol Jago (Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 2002), 33.

  3. Eric Olsen and Glen Schaeffer, eds., We Wanted to Be Writers (New York: Skyhorse, 2011), 178.

  4. Olsen and Schaeffer, 230–231.

  5. Wolfgang Binder, ed., “Sandra Cisneros,” Partial Autobiographies: Interviews with Twenty Chicano Poets (Erlangen: Verlag, Palm & Enke, 1985), 64.

  6. Tom Grimes, ed., The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (New York: Hyperion, 1999), 149–150.

  7. Grimes, 149–150; Bruce Dick and Amritjit Singh, eds., Conversations with Ishmael Reed (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 59.

  8. Binder, 64.

  9. Ramola D., “An Interview with Sandra Cisneros,” Writer’s Chronicle 38.6 (Summer 2006), 6.

  10. Brooks Landon, conversation with David Dowling, 18 September 2015, Iowa City, Iowa.

  11. Olsen and Schaeffer, 188.

  12. Connie Brothers, interview with David Dowling, 18 September 2015, Iowa City, Iowa.

  13. Olsen and Schaeffer, 188.

  14. Carmen Haydee Rivera, Border Crossings and Beyond: The Life and Works of Sandra Cisneros (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 24.

  15. Joy Harjo, The Last Song (Albuquerque: Puerto del Sol, 1975).

  16. Joy Harjo, The Spiral of Memory: Interviews, ed. Laura Coltelli (Ann Arbor: University Press of Michigan, 1996), 114.

  17. Olsen and Schaeffer, 152.

  18. Harjo, Spiral, 114.

  19. Ed Dinger, ed., Seems Like Old Times (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986), 50.

  20. Dinger, 47.

  21. Dinger, 47.

  22. Dinger, 41.

  23. Dinger, 48.

  24. Dinger, 42.

  25. Olsen and Schaeffer, 153.

  26. Rita Dove, Conversations with Rita Dove, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 16.

  27. Olsen and Schaeffer, 153.

  28. “Joy Harjo,” in The Poet’s Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets, ed. Stephen Kuusisto et al. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 84.

  29. Joy Harjo, “My Sister, Myself: Two Paths to Survival,” Ms., September/October 1995, 73.

  30. Rhonda Pettit, Joy Harjo (
Boise: Boise State University Press, 1988), 9; Harjo, “My Sister,” 71.

  31. Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses (New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2006), 64.

  32. Olsen and Schaeffer, 54.

  33. “Joy Harjo’s ‘Crazy Brave’ Path to Finding Her Voice,” National Public Radio, 9 July 2012, web.

  34. Olsen and Schaeffer, 64.

  35. Olsen and Schaeffer, 64.

  36. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  37. Joy Harjo, “Poems from ‘What Drove Me to This’ and from ‘She Had Some Horses,’ ” MFA thesis, University of Iowa, May 1978, 20.

  38. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  39. Harjo, MFA thesis, 17.

  40. Harjo, MFA thesis, 29.

  41. Harjo, Spiral, 70.

  42. Emily Dickinson, Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems, ed. Thomas H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), 211.

  43. Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave: A Memoir (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012), 35; Rivera, 63.

  44. Harjo, Spiral, 70.

  45. Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (New York: Vintage, 2009), 97.

  46. Cisneros, The House on Mango Street, 100.

  47. Rivera, 22.

  48. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  49. Sandra Cisneros, Foreword, Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students, Gregory Michie (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), ix.

  50. Penelope Mesic, “Sandra Cisneros,” Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 69, ed. Roger Matuz (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992), 144.

  51. Olsen and Schaeffer, 239.

  52. Olsen and Schaeffer, 62.

  53. Olsen and Schaeffer, 187.

  54. Olsen and Schaeffer, 230.

  55. Olsen and Schaeffer, 190.

  56. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  57. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  58. Olsen and Schaeffer, 191–192.

  59. Stephanie Vanderslice, “Once More to the Workshop: A Myth Caught in Time,” in Does the Writing Workshop Still Work? ed. Dianne Donnelly (Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters, 2010), 32.

  60. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  61. Olsen and Schaeffer, 106.

  62. Tracy Kidder, interview with David Dowling, 24 November 2015, Iowa City, Iowa.

  63. Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own: Stories From My Life (New York: Knopf, 2015), e-book.

  64. Cisneros, “Introduction: A House of My Own,” in The House on Mango Street, xvi.

  65. Cisneros, A House of My Own.

  66. Olsen and Schaeffer, 171, 98.

  67. Olsen and Schaeffer, 217.

  68. Olsen and Schaeffer, 222.

  69. “Sandra Cisneros: I Hate the Iowa Writers’ Workshop,” WNYC interview, 23 April 2009, web.

  70. Olsen and Schaeffer, 219.

  71. “Sandra Cisneros,” WNYC interview.

  72. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  73. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships.

  10. The Crossover: Rita Dove

  1. Zlatko Anguelov, “Marvin Bell,” The Writing University, web.

  2. Charles Bullard, “U of I Writers’ Workshop Graduate Appointed to be U.S. Poet Laureate,” Des Moines Register, 19 May 1993, [n.p.], Student Records: Rita Dove, RIWW.

  3. “Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo,” Literary Friendships, American Public Media, 17 May 2005.

  4. Rita Dove, Conversations with Rita Dove, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 15–16.

  5. Barbara Yost, “Memories and Magic: Dove’s Pulitzer,” July/August 1987, 18, Student Records: Rita Dove, RIWW.

  6. Dove, Conversations, 16.

  7. Yost, 18, Student Records: Rita Dove, RIWW.

  8. Dove, Conversations, 16.

  9. Dove, Conversations, 16.

  10. Renee H. Shea, “American Smooth: A Profile of Rita Dove,” Poets and Writers, September/October 2004, 41.

  11. Dove, Conversations, 16.

  12. Yost, 19, Student Records: Rita Dove, RIWW.

  13. Robert McDowell, “The Assembling Vision of Rita Dove,” Callaloo 9.1 (1986), 61.

  14. Rita Dove, “The Discovery of Oranges,” MFA thesis, University of Iowa, May 1977, 18–19.

  15. Dove, Conversations, 98.

  16. Max McElwain, Profiles in Communication (Iowa City: Iowa Center for Communication Study, 1991), 164.

  17. Dove, Conversations, 17.

  18. Dove, Conversations, 72.

  19. Dove, Conversations, 16–17.

  20. Dove, Conversations, 15.

  21. Dove, Conversations, 17.

  22. Dove, Conversations, 18.

  23. Conversation with Fred Viebahn, 18 October 2016, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.

  24. Yost, 18–19, Student Records: Rita Dove, RIWW.

  25. Connie Brothers, interview with David Dowling, 2 December 2015, Iowa City, Iowa.

  26. Dove, Conversations, 28.

  27. Rita Dove, Through the Ivory Gate (New York: Pantheon, 1992), 1.

  28. William Walsh, “Isn’t Reality Magic? An Interview with Rita Dove,” Kenyon Review 16.3 (1994), 150.

  29. Dove, Conversations, 165.

  30. Malin Pereira, Rita Dove’s Cosmopolitanism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 74; see also Trey Ellis, “The New Black Aesthetic,” Callaloo 12 (Winter 1989): 233–243.

  31. Dove, MFA thesis, 29.

  32. Pereira, 75.

  33. Dove, Conversations, 98.

  34. Dove, Conversations, 98.

  35. Therese Steffen, Crossing Color: Transcultural Space and Place in Rita Dove’s Poetry, Fiction, and Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 10.

  36. Theodore O. Mason, “African-American Theory and Criticism,” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 15–16.

  37. Dove, Conversations, 21.

  38. Dove, MFA thesis, 26.

  39. Walsh, 149.

  40. Dove, Conversations, 22.

  41. Dove, Conversations, 22–23.

  42. Quoted in Elizabeth Alexander, The Power of Possibility: Essays, Reviews, and Interviews (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 52.

  43. Steffen, 169.

  44. Steffen, 12–13.

  45. Steffen, 171.

  46. Mohamed B. Taleb-Khyar, “An Interview with Maryse Condé and Rita Dove,” Callaloo 14.2 (1991): 234. See also Pat Righelato, Understanding Rita Dove (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 7.

  47. Patricia Kirkpatrick, “The Throne of Blues: An Interview with Rita Dove,” Hungry Mind Review 35 (1995), 57.

  48. Steffen, 7.

  49. Dove, MFA thesis, 5.

  50. Dove, Conversations, 27.

  51. Steffen, 169.

  52. The strong current of German literature and culture that runs through the heart of Dove’s corpus began in Iowa with a poem called “The Bird Frau.” In it, she portrays a German mother awaiting the return of her son from war. The wait grows torturous, claiming her sanity; she “fed the parakeet,/ broke its neck.” She then resolves to “Let everything go wild,” losing herself among the trees, floating about them and singing “like an old rag bird” herself. “She ate less, grew lighter, air tunneling/ through bone, singing.” Passing children flee as she hauntingly beckons them with her small song, “Ein Liedchen, Kinder!” (a little tune, children!). The poem’s arresting denouement appears in a moving tableau of her “Rudi, come home on crutches,” his birdlike “thin legs balancing this atom of life.” Dove, MFA thesis, 42. This lyrical portrait of a mother driven mad by the prospect of the loss of her son in battle extends beyond the inner angst that transforms her life into a birdlike existence. Her modernist Imagism in this case is imbued with subtle yet powerful political commentary on the larger devastating effects of war that ext
end beyond its soldiers and reach deep into the hearts and minds of their loved ones on the home front. Indeed, the bird lady is a casualty of war here, as her love for her son eerily transforms her into the birdlike form that he himself embodies when he arrives on thin legs propped up by crutches.

  53. Steffen, 171.

  54. Righelato, 13.

  55. McElwain, 163.

  56. Eric Bennett writes, “After 1967, there is no trace in the public archives of CIA funding for writing at Iowa, either for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop or the International Writing Program,” although Engle had accepted funds from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was proven to be a CIA front. Bennett points out that although many have suspected this as evidence of “conspiracies lurking behind the façade of American reality,” he found “no evidence that the CIA money influenced writing at Iowa,” and that such “relatively benign activity” instead fits into the broader historical pattern of the cultural cold war.” Eric Bennett, Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015), 113; Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).

  57. McElwain, 164.

  58. Bennett, 113.

  59. Ekaterini Georgoudaki, “Rita Dove: Crossing Boundaries,” Callaloo 14.2 (1991), 420.

  60. Righelato, 13.

  61. Dove, Conversations, 159.

  62. Steffen, 170.

  63. Steffen, 170.

  64. Steffen, 14–15.

  65. Rita Dove, The Yellow House on the Corner (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon Press, 1980), 64.

  66. Dove, Conversations, 112.

  11. The Genius: Jane Smiley

  1. Quoted in Neil Nakadate, Understanding Jane Smiley (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 6.

  2. Nakadate, 7.

  3. Eric Olsen and Glen Schaeffer, eds., We Wanted To Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (New York: Skyhorse, 2011), 186.

  4. Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (New York: Random House, 2005), 3.

  5. Jane Smiley, “Iowa City, 1974,” Mentors, Muses, and Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives, ed. Elizabeth Benedict (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009), 261.

  6. Olsen and Schaeffer, 185.

  7. Olsen and Schaeffer, 185.

  8. Olsen and Schaeffer, 185.