Project MUSE®: Prairie Schooner - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Prairie Schooner.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 77 (2003) through current issueLatest Articles: Prairie SchoonerTWOProject MUSE®Prairie Schooner1542-426X0032-6682Latest articles in Prairie Schooner. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Solitude ≠ Loneliness: The 2026 Edward Stanley Award Essay on the Humanities
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988484
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The standard take on Edward Hopper is that he’s the great visual chronicler of the loneliness, alienation, and anomie of Americans and America in the rah-rah American Century. That cliché, like most clichés, isn’t entirely untrue, but Hopper resisted it. “The loneliness thing,” he told an art journalist who interviewed him near the end of his life in the 1960s, “is overdone.”He aspired to an Emersonian ideal of self-reliance. “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion,” wrote his philosopher hero, who died just before Hopper was born, and “it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” On
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallSolitude ≠ Loneliness: The 2026 Edward Stanley Award Essay on the Humanities2026-04-14text/htmlen-USSolitude ≠ Loneliness: The 2026 Edward Stanley Award Essay on the Humanities2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®161262026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14No Self Self-Portrait, and: Self-Portrait in Awe, and: Self-Portrait without a Body, and: Self-Portrait in Terror, and: Art Majors Overheard after the Election
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988485
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The self escaped the body. The body went around with me in it, but I was not there. I abstained from myself, just as you, too, may on occasion abstain from yourself. What a relief, what a relief it
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallNo Self Self-Portrait, and: Self-Portrait in Awe, and: Self-Portrait without a Body, and: Self-Portrait in Terror, and: Art Majors Overheard after the Election2026-04-14text/htmlen-USNo Self Self-Portrait, and: Self-Portrait in Awe, and: Self-Portrait without a Body, and: Self-Portrait in Terror, and: Art Majors Overheard after the Election2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®190802026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Slow Guillotine
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988487
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At my job in the receiving room of the bookstore, I keep receiving books about radical self-care, and then I keep coming home. In the shower—its head gone, water issuing like a hose—I think I hear construction workers knock on our front door and come in. I think I hear talking, hammering. It could just be the water pressure on my skull. I hold my head. I rub a special tonic that Felix gave me into my lower back.The pain in my back has gotten worse. Certain days it hits before I’ve even booted up the receiving room computers. It shoots from my spine to the space behind my eyes. It digs in, an unmoving quantity of pain. I fantasize pulling my eyes out of their sockets and soaking them in a vat of milk for several
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallSlow Guillotine2026-04-14text/htmlen-USSlow Guillotine2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®209392026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14You Are Not Holden Caulfield
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988490
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I clinch my fingers slowly and watch the fresh blood ooze out of my knuckles and soak into the gauze encircling my hands. It fills in the spaces between the stitches of the weave and lightens the deep rust-colored stains made by whoever wrapped their paws with it before me. It was probably some other tourist—most likely American, Australian, or European—who came to Thailand to enjoy the reckless freedom and generous currency exchange rate.I take a shot of water from a squeeze bottle and look over the ropes at a line of folding chairs filled with my fellow expats. A few of them sit shirtless wearing the bright black, red, or yellow trunks of a boxer. They’re tanned with hard, developed abdomens, like mine. Strong
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallYou Are Not Holden Caulfield2026-04-14text/htmlen-USYou Are Not Holden Caulfield2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®424032026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Hunting Dog
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988493
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So what if it’s autumn and the light slants, it’s weirdly hot, and I’ve rolled the pickup’s windows down. A half-dead fly whacks my hand when I thrust it out the window, we’re going that slow and the season’s so late. Dad’s saying there used to be dogs here, and I believe it: river road, big rocks scattered in amongst the brush and trees, scum on a plugged-up pond. Wild dogs, he says.We were on our way to get a chicken to roast when this dog hunt was suggested. We were passing the locked-up vet’s cage where dogs too big for Dad barked and fell back off their wire fence, and the littler dogs cowered in hope. Dad says he needs a dog to guard the empty house, to keep him company, some kind of wild Yorkie, its fur
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallHunting Dog2026-04-14text/htmlen-USHunting Dog2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®77962026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14The Language Police, Empath Division
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988496
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The Language Police is a vast coalition of monitors who ensure the citizenry uses their words correctly, made up of smaller forces for every single word in the English language. Our word is empath. We go by the dictionary definition, which is “chiefly in science fiction, one who experiences the pain of others in a way unexplained by conventional science and psychology.”Our force is small, much too small to keep the widespread misuse of our particular word under control. It’s hard to say why this is, really. Vast forces are policing misuse of literally, and you can see how well that’s going. Not only does the problem continue to be widespread, they’ve had to build entire prisons just for the literally crimes, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallThe Language Police, Empath Division2026-04-14text/htmlen-USThe Language Police, Empath Division2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®264602026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Sundown
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988499
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Glacial Mountain rises above the smoke-colored cinderblock walls of Sunny Sunset. Entitled “Reflections,” the wallpaper mural was donated by Grace Baptist Women’s Guild and put up by Wanda Logan’s husband. The snow-capped peak is reflected in a still lake surrounded by purple phlox, Queen Anne’s lace, and delicate buttercups. A deer with attentive ears stands in tall grass beside a stream that gurgles out of the valley and onto the cadaver-colored linoleum floor at the end of the hall. At the foot of the stream sits Miss Georgine Kern in a wheelchair that’s nearly as boney and lopsided as she is. She looks up at the mountain, pulls a starched pink coverlet over her thin legs, and tells Deer, “It’s gonna rain.”This
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallSundown2026-04-14text/htmlen-USSundown2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®348592026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14In the Body of Everything
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988502
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I remember that I was meant to be picking up my brother from the airport, and I was dumb idiot late.I had been busy in the bathroom mirror pressing on a blush called Coral Punch. My face looked more awake than it had in a while—round cheeks, skin untanned but flushed. I studied it, trying to memorize myself this way. Lately, on TikTok, girls had been posting videos asking people for advice on making them look hotter, by which they meant younger. In the hump of my nose, I saw an echo of my brother’s face. Our nose belonged to the family patriarchy, but it chose me anyway. The hump reminded me to feel guilty for being late; my heart sped up, and my breath became shallow.Quickly, I toasted up a bagel and pulled my
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallIn the Body of Everything2026-04-14text/htmlen-USIn the Body of Everything2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®409752026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14The Bird That Cries Mayday
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988505
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Friday, 12 April 1942, 6:15 pm. A German warplane flew over the rocky outcrops of Oke Lapa near Ikogosi in British colonial Nigeria. The Messer-schmitt Bf 109 thundered over the hot and cold springs at Ikogosi, sputtering a dark plume from its distressed engine. Its engine stalled, killing the motion of its three-blade propeller, and it nose-dived straight toward a close tangle of trees. Somehow, the pilot managed to get its blunt nose into the air again. The plane flew into the final burst of golden light in the evening, jerking. The dense tree canopy fell away from the plane, and the three occupants didn’t see the jagged black rocks that rose from the earth, slick with moss and lichen.The pilot held the control
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallThe Bird That Cries Mayday2026-04-14text/htmlen-USThe Bird That Cries Mayday2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®247602026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Somewhere in Tennessee
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988508
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I live alone now. It is just me and the dog. My husband is dead. He died the day before my seventy-fifth birthday, two weeks after the move—if my memory is to be trusted.My husband was a cautious man. After the operation on his prostate, he would not hold our neighbor’s kitten in his lap for fear of radiation harming the creature. Once, he stayed up late filling out the warranty and registration forms for appliances in the new house. It seemed a little silly. We would die before they did. But I did not tell him that. I am glad that I did not actually say it.Thin strips of paper. They are everywhere—taped over the microwave, by the kitchen sink, on the refrigerator. All in red ink. All in his hand—the tall letters
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallSomewhere in Tennessee2026-04-14text/htmlen-USSomewhere in Tennessee2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®245302026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14The Long Save
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988511
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Sometimes I tell it this way: my father saved a man’s life once. He didn’t ask for anything in return. He simply saw the man was choking and ran inside to save him.Sometimes I tell it like this: the man ordered a steak and fries and ate his meal alone. My father watched him, noticing the pleasure in his eyes, until one of his bites turned to fear. My father barreled through the door and worked his hands beneath the man’s belly. The man looked back at him, out of breath but grateful.If I get to it, I tell this part, too: my father didn’t know if he should save him. He imagined how it would feel to hold the man as the life drained from his body. His hands beneath his stomach, his chest against his back; the last
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallThe Long Save2026-04-14text/htmlen-USThe Long Save2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®121672026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Poland
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988514
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We had a painting in our apartment when I was a child growing up in New England, deep reds, greens, stripes of blue: a large naked woman, seated with her hair wrapped in a towel, her eyes closed. The artist, Maria Dawska, was Polish. When my mom died in the spring of 2009, stoically, emaciated, in a heavy wig with her makeup overdone by a hospice nurse, I didn’t know how to face life without her. I was forty-one, had a small savings and a job in Boston that meant little to me. My only thought was to run away, and I searched Kayak for its cheapest one-way tickets across the ocean. Warsaw popped up, and I recalled the painting of the naked woman.I traveled on my own, without a group or Polish guide. There were other
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallPoland2026-04-14text/htmlen-USPoland2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®231632026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Unbound
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988515
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In “Facebook Writers: The Emergence of a New Generation of Nigerian Poets” (Research in African Literatures, autumn 2024), I assert that Nigerian poetry is in its fourth generation, one that is powered by poets like Romeo Oriogun, Logan February, Bion Achibma, Edwardson Ukata, Chisom Ukata, Bryan Okwesili, and more, who started writing and publishing on Facebook since the enactment of the anti-gay law in Nigeria in 2014. Regardless of the sexual and gender identities of fourth-generation Nigerian poets, the violence and illegality of the anti-gay law is the primary force that led to the emergence of this generation, ideologically speaking, and Unbound seeks to collect their voices.—Chibueze Darlington Anuonye
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallUnbound2026-04-14text/htmlen-USUnbound2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®21982026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Censoring Prairie Schooner
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988520
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He thought he could see through the darkened window that she was still a good-looking woman, and the men in the bar would surely notice that, those lonely men would see that he was not lonely any longer. This is a story about a story, a story you’ve likely never read, by an author you don’t know. The story was so controversial in 1963 that its notoriety made the New York Times and other papers across the nation. People feared that it would provoke arrests, academics would lose their jobs, there would be protests, maybe even riots. And it hadn’t even been published.Though “Anniversary” isn’t a love story—one might even call it an anti-love story—the story about “Anniversary” is about love, about the decades-long
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallCensoring Prairie Schooner2026-04-14text/htmlen-USCensoring Prairie Schooner2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®310372026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Anniversary
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988521
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Two years to the day, McDonald thought, two years since he had last come through Lincoln, Nebraska, in the dead of winter, going west to see his relatives during the Christmas let-out. Through the begrimed train window he saw the wood frame houses emerge frigidly from the somnolent snow-blown land, and the trees, like exposed fretful nerves, black against the gray December sky. He vaguely remembered the curve of the railroad track and the landscape from that time two years before, but now everything was very clear to him, chiseled there, as if he saw it all for the first time really, as if perhaps his eyes had altered in those two years. And still he felt an eagerness akin to that rush of the time before. There had
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallAnniversary2026-04-14text/htmlen-USAnniversary2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®521332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Dream Girl: Winner of the 2025 Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988522
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In Islam, dreams fall into three distinct categories:Messages from GodMessages from the psycheMessages from the devilWhile there are holy texts dedicated to deciphering the messages buried within dreams, it is impossible to know the messenger with any degree of certainty. There is a hadith that of the forty-six signs of Prophethood, the only one that remains is the ability to receive visions from the divine. It is for this reason Islamic scholars forbid amateurs from attempting the sacred art of dream interpretation.Once upon a time, a king dreamt that all his teeth fell out of his mouth. The first dream interpreter he visited told him his entire family would die in the very near future. The king grew angry. He
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallDream Girl: Winner of the 2025 Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil2026-04-14text/htmlen-USDream Girl: Winner of the 2025 Summer Creative Nonfiction Contest, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®236202026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Contributor Notes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988524
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coverPhoto courtesy of the Sheldon MuseumEdward Hopper, “Room in New York,” 1932© 2025 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NYnote: This issue includes the first winner of the new Edward Stanley Award Essay on the Humanities: Kurt Andersen’s “Solitude ≠ Loneliness.” As an undergraduate student of English at the University of Nebraska, Edward Stanley was one of the original “board of editors” of Prairie Schooner, and he contributed poetry to the first issue of the journal in 1927. He went on to become a domestic and foreign correspondent, and an editor for the Associated Press (at which time he coined the term “Dust Bowl”), and eventually the Deputy Director of the United States
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/229/image/coversmallContributor Notes2026-04-14text/htmlen-USContributor Notes2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®248852026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14