Award Date

1-1-2007

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

First Committee Member

Claudia Keelan

Number of Pages

83

Abstract

My second collection of poetry, In the archives represents a bridge between my first collection of poems, Lit interim, and my newest, Myths and miscellany. In In the archives, the central metaphor is that of the archives: which can be a metaphor for memory, for how we store and organize knowledge, a metaphor for the place where poetry is made. In this collection, my concerns with formal characteristics of the poems is beginning to fade, though there are still remnants of such concerns, particularly in the serial poem, "Tracking sites," whose location on the page is determined by the dominant preposition in the almost Steinian repetition of those words. Other themes of organization, such as inventories, variations, briefs, sites, imperatives, and versions dominate the work, as if they could perhaps offer some insight into how we think, how we create, how poesis happens; This collection takes as its backdrop the current war(s) in the Middle East, living in a Western city, strange libraries occupied by half-presences, tulip bulbs struggling from their winter stasis, and strange worlds inhabited by unnamed barbarians up to some unclear crimes against humanity. These are poems struggling to free themselves from the mechanized world, poems that wish to return to a more pastoral version of themselves. Perhaps, though, such a return is impossible.

Keywords

Archives; In The Archives; Original writing; Poems; Poetry

Controlled Subject

American literature; Literature, Modern

File Format

pdf

File Size

706.56 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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