Childhood – Michigan Quarterly Review

Childhood

Image of Birds flying in black and white

The Generosity of Arpeggios and Ravens

20 years ago MQR published the first of two special issues on the Secret Spaces of Childhood. The following poem, from Thylias Moss, is available via our archives. The Generosity of Arpeggios and Ravens Please note: The following is an arpeggio. It was possible to leap from world to world using the sturdiest balloons I’d […]

The Generosity of Arpeggios and Ravens Read More »

20 years ago MQR published the first of two special issues on the Secret Spaces of Childhood. The following poem, from Thylias Moss, is available via our archives. The Generosity of Arpeggios and Ravens Please note: The following is an arpeggio. It was possible to leap from world to world using the sturdiest balloons I’d

“Primal Postcards: ‘Madeline’ as a Secret Space of Ludwig Bemelmans’s Childhood,” by Mary Galbraith

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One or more pictures stand out as the book’s primal raison d’etre; that is, there is at least one picture which activates a “flashbulb memory” from the creator’s childhood and which the story explains in an ambiguous way. The manifest storybook explanation for this primal scene is benign and reassuring while the latent and historical interpretation is traumatic and unbearable.

“Primal Postcards: ‘Madeline’ as a Secret Space of Ludwig Bemelmans’s Childhood,” by Mary Galbraith Read More »

One or more pictures stand out as the book’s primal raison d’etre; that is, there is at least one picture which activates a “flashbulb memory” from the creator’s childhood and which the story explains in an ambiguous way. The manifest storybook explanation for this primal scene is benign and reassuring while the latent and historical interpretation is traumatic and unbearable.

Sentimental Value

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* Lillian Li *

After my grandmother died, my mother was given all of her possessions. There was a lifetime of sentimental trinkets, of furniture that had never gone a day without its dust-protecting plastic jacket, and of strange redundancies. My grandmother left her with four refrigerators, three televisions, and twelve swatches of fox fur. My mother complained to a friend that she had no idea what to give up, what to throw away, what to burn. There was no talk of keeping.

Sentimental Value Read More »

* Lillian Li *

After my grandmother died, my mother was given all of her possessions. There was a lifetime of sentimental trinkets, of furniture that had never gone a day without its dust-protecting plastic jacket, and of strange redundancies. My grandmother left her with four refrigerators, three televisions, and twelve swatches of fox fur. My mother complained to a friend that she had no idea what to give up, what to throw away, what to burn. There was no talk of keeping.

“The V-Letter: A Story Survived,” by John Felstiner

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Clarie, first a word then a name, grounds this story and eventually breaks out from a war letter. To know a story, to discover its how and why, will mean recovering, digging back toward its beginning—and that means memory.

“The V-Letter: A Story Survived,” by John Felstiner Read More »

Clarie, first a word then a name, grounds this story and eventually breaks out from a war letter. To know a story, to discover its how and why, will mean recovering, digging back toward its beginning—and that means memory.

“Dower Chest,” by Kara Van De Graf

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* poetry by Kara Van De Graf from MQR 53:3, Summer 2014 *

From the grandmother of my grandmother, it lives

at the footboard of the bed, passed down to me

by my own mother. As a child, I traced

the blonde-wood petals of flowers, the garden

etched with dark walnut vines. And below,

near a lip of scrollwork, two narrow drawers kept

in check by a key. It was only when I slid

the drawers from their runners that I noticed

“Dower Chest,” by Kara Van De Graf Read More »

* poetry by Kara Van De Graf from MQR 53:3, Summer 2014 *

From the grandmother of my grandmother, it lives

at the footboard of the bed, passed down to me

by my own mother. As a child, I traced

the blonde-wood petals of flowers, the garden

etched with dark walnut vines. And below,

near a lip of scrollwork, two narrow drawers kept

in check by a key. It was only when I slid

the drawers from their runners that I noticed

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