Project MUSE®: The Missouri Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in The Missouri Review.daily12026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. (1978) through current issue (issues missing in vol. 3)
Latest Articles: The Missouri ReviewTWOProject MUSE®The Missouri Review1548-99300191-1961Latest articles in The Missouri Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Cost of Living
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988055
<p></p>
The rise in cost of living throughout much of the world is a current concern for good reasons, though the value of money in the United States has been a persistent issue since Robert Morris, the Philadelphia merchant who funded the American Revolution by kiting loans between international banks and issuing nearly worthless "Morris notes" to soldiers. For later partaking in the wild land speculation that resulted in the Panic of 1796, Morris was thrown into our country's first real penitentiary, the Walnut Street Prison, where he was visited by our first president and other luminaries. The US economy went on to suffer more than a century of price surges and declines, leading up to the biggie in the 1930s. In my
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallThe Cost of Living2026-04-19text/htmlen-USThe Cost of Living2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®98002026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Flight
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988056
<p></p>
Jim left his wife late that spring and drove to my mother's house. He arrived in the afternoon, his yellow Volkswagen Beetle spilling over with his prized record collection, Jefferson Airplane's Freedom at Point Zero, and the Steve Miller Band's Fly Like an Eagle, and a Paul Simon single, "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover," and when he opened the trunk, they came spilling out, a torrent of vinyl liberation, a cornucopia of musical id splashing across the pocked and tarred macadam of the driveway. He was puzzled at first. He stood amid the various albums that had come to rest at his shoes as if finally comprehending what he was doing, the fact that he had left his wife with the stated intention of staying away for
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallFlight2026-04-19text/htmlen-USFlight2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®313942026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Safe Haven for Monsters
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988057
<p></p>
Photo by NOAA, National Ocean ServiceDeep beneath the waters of Lake Champlain is a graveyard of shipwrecks, accessible only to scuba divers zealous enough to brave the cold temperatures and low visibility. Even in midsummer, hypothermia can be a risk to those who don't take precautions, and caliginous currents obscure wrecks so only pieces can be explored at a time: a severed sail suffocating in algae. A bloated boom, blistering and peeling. A mangled tiller laced with waterweed. All floating into vision one by one, as if dismembered. Generally, only hardcore divers are willing to undertake the endeavor for such little reward. And even fewer dare the attempt in the offseason, when temperatures plummet to just
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallSafe Haven for Monsters2026-04-19text/htmlen-USSafe Haven for Monsters2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®402472026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Stillness in Motion
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988058
<p></p>
Dogū, Jomon period, 1,000–400 BCE, ceramic, Tokyo National MuseumHaruki tore ahead, weaving through picnic blankets and clusters of tourists angling their phones skyward."Wait, Haruki!" I stumbled after him, past a woman adjusting her kimono beneath the torii at Ueno Tōshō-gū. He sprinted up the shrine steps and clambered onto the stone base of a lantern, gripping it like monkey bars. The offering box rattled as someone bowed beside him. I hissed his name, too loud, and hurried up after him, bowing an apology to no one in particular. An older man gave me a look. Haruki dropped down, laughing, then bolted again. It was a weekday, but the park was packed. Petals drifted like confetti—a flurry of pink and white
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallStillness in Motion2026-04-19text/htmlen-USStillness in Motion2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®264542026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Poem After Collapse, and: Poison Pill, and: The Victim, and: Thenceforth, and: Anything to Declare?, and: The Child
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988059
<p></p>
I was born in a cursed land. In the west we were cursed with fertile plains that bore great harvests of wheat and soy and corn. In the north we were cursed with mountains whose icebound passes cursed us by melting into rivers. These rivers they cursed us by opening vast networks of commerce, which cursed us in turn with cities dedicated to art and enterprise and the cultivation of knowledge. With barges they cursed us to dress in dyed wools and silks, to drink fine coffees and teas, with books they cursed us to understand each other. From the earth we were cursed with aquifers and precious metals and deep reservoirs of oil. From the sky we were cursed with golden and ruby and violet birds, with a moon that
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallPoem After Collapse, and: Poison Pill, and: The Victim, and: Thenceforth, and: Anything to Declare?, and: The Child2026-04-19text/htmlen-USPoem After Collapse, and: Poison Pill, and: The Victim, and: Thenceforth, and: Anything to Declare?, and: The Child2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®126062026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Modigliani: The Pure Bohemian
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988060
<p></p>
Amedeo Modigliani in his studio, 1915, courtesy of PicrylBohemia has nothing and lives from what it has. Hope is its religion, faith in itself its code, charity is all it has for a budget.Rosalie, the proprietor of Chez Rosalie, a trattoria on the rue Campagne-Première, fed the stray cats and dogs that showed up at her doorstep. She also put out scraps for the rats that foraged through her trash cans. But hungry artists were her specialty. In her youth, she had been an artist's model and maintained a soft spot for their struggles. For a few francs, she offered steaming bowls of spaghetti and a glass of wine. Sometimes she fed artists on credit or, if they were any good, in exchange for drawings.When Modigliani
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallModigliani: The Pure Bohemian2026-04-19text/htmlen-USModigliani: The Pure Bohemian2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®203732026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19When Picture Rolls Adjust Horizontal Hold
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988062
<p></p>
One block west of the legendary Chelsea Hotel, the Allerton Annex had none of its charm. The facade of the five-story building was painted a melancholy gray, the doors darker still. Inside the dingy lobby, dusty bulbs cast a yellow glow on peeling wallpaper. A small office was visible through a window where an uninterested old man sometimes appeared. On the wall outside this window was a pay phone where residents could make and receive calls. When it rang, and if someone bothered to answer it, the front desk would buzz the room, and a red cage light mounted high inside the unit would flash.No bohemian artistic types roamed this building. Instead of a creative ambience, desperation filled the air. Home to a rotating
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallWhen Picture Rolls Adjust Horizontal Hold2026-04-19text/htmlen-USWhen Picture Rolls Adjust Horizontal Hold2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®277532026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19The End of Capitalism, and: On Time and Being in Time, and: Poem After Entropy, and: Love Poem for Anaximander of Miletus
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988063
<p></p>
from Infinite
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallThe End of Capitalism, and: On Time and Being in Time, and: Poem After Entropy, and: Love Poem for Anaximander of Miletus2026-04-19text/htmlen-USThe End of Capitalism, and: On Time and Being in Time, and: Poem After Entropy, and: Love Poem for Anaximander of Miletus2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®215232026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Cicada
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988064
<p></p>
Photo by Bob WebsterIt was Shizuka's narrow bedroom window, plastic blinds obscuring the murky night outside, that led me to say that what I remembered most from our school days ten years ago in Shanghai were the windows. She frowned. "The windows? That's it?" Yes, and afterward, other buildings felt oppressively dark, I said, before realizing that could be insulting. Shizuka rented part of a townhouse in north Chicago, and scant light entered her room, where a potted fiddle-leaf fig had dropped withered leaves all over the cherrywood floor. We were drunk, though, so Shizuka just plunked down on the bed, shut her eyes against the lamp's weak glow, and said, "Cath, you're funny."Our international high school
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallCicada2026-04-19text/htmlen-USCicada2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®413332026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Blood
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988065
<p></p>
Photo by Reiner EhlersA few days after the blood drive, Lewis received his donor card in the mail and learned that his blood type was O."I'm type A," Cecelia said, looking over his shoulder."Of course you are," Lewis thought of saying, but instead smiled flatly and said nothing.Later, after Cecelia'd gone to bed, and unable to sleep himself, he decided to look up their daughter's blood type. A parent should know these things. He found her birth certificate easily—Cecelia was nothing if not organized; there was a file labeled "Matilde" in the cabinet—and saw that it was B.Lewis blanched. He recalled the genetic prediction charts in Biology 101—they had a funny name—and was fairly certain that a crossing of O and A
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallBlood2026-04-19text/htmlen-USBlood2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®431142026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Solving for Death
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988066
<p></p>
Photo courtesy of the authorI turn away when the nurse jabs my husband with a needle to draw his blood. She refers to him as my father. All she sees is a bald eighty-year-old with congestive heart failure and blood cancer. I still see the dashing blond tech executive with fire in his hazel eyes who used to drag race me up the hill to work, my Mazda vs. his BMW.The test results take an hour, so I roll Walter to the cafeteria. Although he'd rather be on a bike than in a wheelchair, the routine of our weekly visits provides odd comfort."It's surprising you're such a good caretaker," Walter says in his sassy teasing voice—that version of him who danced to bouzouki music at our wedding thirty years ago, making all the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallSolving for Death2026-04-19text/htmlen-USSolving for Death2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®328922026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19Good Bad Girl: Becoming Mae West
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988067
<p></p>
Mae West, circa 1932, courtesy of PhotofestWhen I'm caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried.Mae West delighted in making myths about her life and career. She told several versions of what inspired her to write Sex, the Broadway play that made her famous after she toiled for decades as a minor performer in vaudeville. The core of the story went like this: one evening on the Manhattan waterfront, she saw a young woman with frizzy bottle-blond hair, rumpled clothes, and an expensive plumed hat "entertaining" two sailors. Mae assumed that the men had given her the hat and would pay her between fifty cents and two dollars a trick. As the three revelers with their shared bottle of cheap
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmallGood Bad Girl: Becoming Mae West2026-04-19text/htmlen-USGood Bad Girl: Becoming Mae West2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®216412026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19"A Supposed Person": Self, Identity, and the Confessional Question in Three Recent Collections of Poetry
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068
<p></p>
When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse—it does not mean—me—but a supposed person.According to the poet and critic David Lucas, there is an "illusion of personal encounter in the language of a poem"; it seems as if we're engaging with the real self of the poet when we read their work. This idea has held sway in American poetry arguably at least since the arrival of the loose grouping of mid-twentieth-century writers who became known as the confessional poets. In a now infamous discussion of Sylvia Plath's poetry in which the term "confessional poetry" was first used, Irving Howe wrote that the "confessional poem would seem to be one in which the writer speaks to the reader, telling him, without the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988068">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-19T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/241/image/coversmall"A Supposed Person": Self, Identity, and the Confessional Question in Three Recent Collections of Poetry2026-04-19text/htmlen-US"A Supposed Person": Self, Identity, and the Confessional Question in Three Recent Collections of Poetry2026-04-192026TWOProject MUSE®279462026-05-19T00:00:00-05:002026-04-19