Writings

Ohio and Ohio Valley writers and writing, literary and cultural history with occasional ventures into the greater Midwest and Upper South.

“That’s my middle-west”: Nick Carraway’s Christmas Memories

By buckeyemuse | December 24, 2015

One of my all time favorite passages from The Great Gatsby concerns Christmas and the Midwest. The passage comes towards the end of the novel as Nick Carraway is describing the aftermath of Gatsby’s murder and preparing to leave New York. There’s something about this passage that captures that exhilaration of returning home for the…

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Wolfhound: James Jones In World War Two

By buckeyemuse | November 12, 2015

Hawaii. December 7, 1941. On a tropical Sunday morning the drone of Japanese fighters emerges over the U.S. Army’s Wheeler Field next to Schofield Barracks. Billowing plumes of smoke rise into the air as American fighter planes are destroyed. Men whirl about in confusion and fire desperately at the Japanese bombers overhead. In the midst…

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“Upon The Gallows Tree”: E. Merrill Root’s poem “Witchcraft”

By buckeyemuse | October 30, 2015

About a year ago I was browsing through the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature: Volume One—The Authors, and I read the entry on a writer named E. Merrill Root. I had never heard of him before. E. Merrill Root was a poet and professor who spent much of his career at Earlham College in Richmond,Indiana. Edward…

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In The October Country…..

By buckeyemuse | October 21, 2015

For me, October always has two contrasting dimensions. The first is the traditional season of harvest, golden afternoons and “mists and mellow fruitfulness.” There’s an excitement in the air with the return of the school year. It’s a time of homecoming parades, crisp mornings, apples, pumpkins, hayrides, and football games. Nature’s autumn beauty is on…

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An Autumn Classic: “Hang On Sloopy” and the OSU Marching Band

By buckeyemuse | October 10, 2015

It was fifty years ago–on October 9, 1965– that The Ohio State University Marching Band first played the McCoys’ monster hit “Hang On Sloopy” during an OSU football game. The song has become a football season staple ever since, traditionally played during the transition from the third to the fourth quarter. Whenever I recall my…

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The Small Town in the Machine Age: Sherwood Anderson’s “Poor White”

By buckeyemuse | September 23, 2015

For those generally familiar with American literature, particularly that of the early twentieth century, the name Sherwood Anderson likely brings to mind his famous collection of interconnected short stories called Winesburg, Ohio (1919). This book is one of a number appearing around the time that helped, as is often said in some literary histories, to…

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America’s Teacher: William Holmes McGuffey

By buckeyemuse | September 23, 2015

American educator William Holmes McGuffey, famous for creating his McGuffey Readers, an influential series of school texts in 19th century America, was born on September 23, 1800 in western Pennsylvania. He received a sparse education in his childhood and youth, but learned enough to eventually teach in the one-room country schools of rural Ohio after…

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Der Dunbar: Paul Dunbar’s German-American Dialect Poem “Lager Beer”

By buckeyemuse | September 11, 2015

It’s Oktoberfest season around the world, so I’ve decided to highlight an interesting poem of Paul Dunbar’s in honor of the occasion. Oktoberfest is a sixteen-day long beer and folk festival held in Munich each year in September that has inspired other similar celebrations around the world. The poem is “Lager Beer,” an early dialect…

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Our “Greatest Civil War Novel?”: MacKinlay Kantor’s “Andersonville”

By buckeyemuse | September 2, 2015

Deep in the quiet Georgia countryside lies twenty-six and a half acres of land that once were home to 45,000 men. The very silence of the spot stands in sobering contrast to the constant din that resounded here one hundred and fifty years ago. What was once a landscape of squalor, disease, and suffering is…

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