Table of Contents
Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies
(formerly Kansas Quarterly)
Volume 55, Number 1 Spring/April 2024
“Taking Care of Business”: Elvis as a Working Class Hero. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
by Andrew Scheiber
Three Poems (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Perhaps the Dam Will Hold
Another Wet Winter, Arkansas
Lost in the Forest of Unaware
by Tyrone Jaeger
Southward Bound on a Mississippi Steamer, 1863 (fiction)
(excerpted from Lottie Deno: A Novel). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
by Frank Thurmond
Still Life in Black and White (poetry). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
by Kelsey D. Mahaffey
Pray (fiction). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
by Anton DiSclafani
“God loves you nearly as much as I do”: Toward a Poetics of Natality in
Maureen Bronson’s Delta Pearl,
a 1989 Harlequin Historical Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
by Guy Lancaster
Four Poems (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Nightfall
Our Pear Tree
Providence
Repast
by Claude Wilkinson
Forty Days of This (non-fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
by Jeffrey Utzinger
Boy & Bayou (poetry). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48
by Mason Joiner
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Lying in Wait (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
by Jeannette Brown
Two Poems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Halfway Down The Hill: Just Upriver From Catfish Point
White Blossoms: My Child In A Tree
by Edward Ziegler
The Last Cherokee (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
by Tyler Hauth
Book of the Dead (poetry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
by Virginia Archer
Reviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
McCormick, Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey, reviewed by Gregory
Hansen
Wilkinson, Soon Done with the Crosses, reviewed by Joan Wylie Hall
Collins, Waking Past Midnight: Selected Poems, reviewed by Al Maginnes
Maginnes, Fellow Survivors: New and Selected Poems, reviewed by Floyd Collins
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
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Contributors
Virginia Archer is a native of Louisiana and graduated
from Louisiana State University with a degree in an
thropology, through which she discovered her passion
for folklore and story. In her writing, Virginia is inter
ested in the spaces where religious folkways, poverty
and the natural environment intersect in rural Amer
ica. She currently resides in the Pacific Northwest with
her husband, their son and golden retriever. Her writ
ing has been featured in Deep South Magazine, 225
Magazine, Country Roads Magazine, They Call Us, and
is forthcoming in Mutha Magazine, Soul Lit and Min
erva Press.
Jeannette Brown lives and writes in Knoxville, TN.
Her novel, The Illusion of Leaving, was published by
Texas Review Press. Her short fiction has been pub
lished in Bellevue Literary Review, Southwestern American
Literature, and others. Her play, Cuba Libre, is currently
in development with the Tennessee Stage Company.
Floyd Collins holds an MFA in Creative Writing and
a PhD in Twentieth-Century Literature from the Uni-
versity of Arkansas. He has authored several volumes
of poetry, including My Back Pages: The Teresa Poems
(2022). The Living Artifact, a selection of his essay-re
views, appeared in 2021. Most recently Waking Past
Midnight: Selected Poems, a career retrospective, was
published by Stephen F. Austin State UP in 2023.
Anton DiSclafani is the author of the novels The
Yonahlossee Riding Camp For Girls and The After Party.
Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Guernica,
Narrative, American Short Fiction, and the New York
Times. She lives in Auburn, AL.
Gregory Hansen is Professor of Folklore and English
at Arkansas State University, where he also teaches in
the Heritage Studies PhD Program. He is the author
of A Florida Fiddler: The Life and Times of Richard Sea
man, and his publications focus on roots music, folk
lore and language, and public folklore.
Joan Wylie Hall is a senior lecturer emerita at the Uni
versity of Mississippi, author of Shirley Jackson: A Study
of the Short Fiction (1993), and editor of Conversations
with Audre Lorde (2004) and Conversations with Natasha
Trethewey (2013). She has published scores of essays,
reference book entries, and book reviews.
Tyler Hauth writes fantasy and horror inspired by the
southern United States. His stories often invoke a
sense of dread by calling on elements of the supernat
ural or fantastic. He teaches writing at Emerson Col
lege, owns The Book Forge in Orange, MA, and is a
devoted husband / father to an incredible wife and
two young boys. Tyler has a novel releasing in late
2024 with Nef House Publishing called The Dog War.
He hopes to write many more in the coming years.
Tyrone Jaeger is the author of the novel Radio Eldo
rado, the story collection So Many True Believers and
the cross-genre novella The Runaway Note. His writing
has appeared in the Oxford American, Southern Human
ities Review, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. He is
the recipient of the Porter Fund Literary Prize, and he
has been a member of the faculty at Hendrix College
since 2008. Born and raised in the Catskill Moun
tains, Tyrone lives on Beaverfork Lake, AR, with his
wife and daughter. Visit his website www.tyrone
jaeger.com.
Mason Joiner is Assistant Professor of English at Del
gado Community College in New Orleans, LA. He
moved to New Orleans from Alexandria, LA, in 2010
and received a BA in Film & Theatre from the Uni
versity of New Orleans and an MA in English from
Northwestern State University.
Guy Lancaster currently is the editor of the online
Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Ar
kansas Library System (CALS) and the author of a
number of books on race and violence, including
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American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching (U
of Arkansas P, 2021).
Al Maginnes is the author of fourteen collections of
poems, most recently Fellow Survivors: New and Selected
Poems (Redhawk Publications 2023). He is retired
from teaching and lives in Raleigh, NC.
Kelsey D. Mahaffey rests her head most nights in
Nashville, TN, but keeps half her heart in New Or
leans. She needs music and nature like breath and
water and walks the Earth barefoot beside a bow
legged cat. Her work can be seen (or is forthcoming)
in Pensive, The Sunlight Press, Writers Resist, Cumberland
River Review, Eunoia Review, and Minerva Rising Press.
Andrew Scheiber is Professor Emeritus of English at
the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. He has
published on a wide range of authors (Nathaniel Haw
thorne, Henry James, Rebecca Harding Davis, August
Wilson, and Toni Morrison) as well as on literary
theory, music, and film. His work has appeared in The
Henry James Review, Legacy, Modern Fiction Studies, and
New Literary History as well as in Arkansas Review.
Frank Thurmond grew up in Little Rock, AR, and
holds graduate degrees in English from Southern
Methodist University and Oxford University. His
books include the memoir Before I Sleep: A Memoir of
Travel and Reconciliation (2012, Et Alia Press), a collec
tion of short fiction titled Ring of Five: A Novella and
Four Stories (2015, Et Alia Press) and his poetry chap
book Remembrance and Other Poems (2022, Braddock
Avenue Books). In addition to writing, he is a musi
cian and filmmaker, and his script for his short film
“The Dealer’s Tale” won the Best Screenplay award at
the El Dorado Film Festival. (The film also received a
commendation from director Werner Herzog.) His
newest book is Lottie Deno: A Novel, and he has
adapted it into a screenplay for a feature film. He
teaches literature, composition, music and screenwrit
ing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Jeffrey Utzinger’s first collection of nonfiction essays,
The Risk Involved, is forthcoming with April Gloaming
Publishing (November 2024). Jeffrey has an MFA in
Creative Writing and a PhD in American Literature.
He lives in Lockhart, TX, where he keeps chickens, a
duck, and occasionally, a few thousand bees.
Claude Wilkinson has been Provost Scholar and also
John and Renée Grisham Visiting Southern Writer
in Residence at the University of Mississippi. His
poems have appeared recently in Alabama Literary Re
view, Arkansas Review, Chronicles, Poetry South, and
Southern Quarterly, and his recent poetry collections
include Marvelous Light, World without End, and Soon
Done with the Crosses.
Edward Ziegler is an author, poet, lecturer, and legal
scholar who lives and writes in the Wildcat Moun
tains near Denver He is a native Kentuckian, a former
All-American high school and Notre Dame footballer,
an Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of
Denver and co-founder and past president of The
Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute. His recent po
etry and memoirs are found in literary reviews in the
United States, Canada, Italy, Russia, India, and Ma
laysia. His literary writing has been nominated for a
Pushcart Prize. www.edwardziegler.com.
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