Award Date

1-1-2006

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

First Committee Member

Aliki Barnstone

Number of Pages

70

Abstract

No poet, Eliot says, makes art alone by himself; he works with the collection of the dead and living poets around him. It is with this in mind that I have put together this poetry collection, Donning the White Agbada, in honor of William Stafford. Although the collection is dedicated to Mr. Stafford, it is not limited to him; it draws freely and extensively from different writers, different materials, and different periods---from the Christian Bible, to Robert Frost, to Sophocles, to Nigerian History, and to Yoruba mythology, among others. So that what is created (in my ongoing exploration of Western poetics on the one hand, and Nigerian/Yoruba poetics on the other) are poems that are oral but plain-spoken---as seen, for example, with the opening poem 'What I Seek', and other poems such as 'The Elemental Prosody of Birds', 'Threnody', 'My Son', 'Kneeling For What Is Right', and 'Calling Water By Its Name'. The hope with this collection is that the reader gets a good sense of how deeply I appreciate some of the masters who have come before me and how they (Yoruba or not) continue to influence my work---especially William Stafford.

Keywords

Agbada; Donning; Original writing; Poetry; White

Controlled Subject

American literature; African literature

File Format

pdf

File Size

880.64 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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