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Anything Like Us is a collection of poems with a critical introduction. In this introduction, I explore modern alternatives to Romantic and Neo-Romantic lyric expression. I conclude that a contemporary lyric that desires to be, in some fashion, about itself, must exhibit an acceptance of the mediating influences of time and language, while cultivating an inter-subjective point-of-view that does not insist too much on the authority of a single, coherent voice. The poems in Anything Like Us reflect, in both form and content, many of the conclusions advanced in the introduction. Nearly all the poems concern the desire for, and failure to find, meaningful connections in an uncertain world .

This thesis reads the poetry and poetics of Charles Bernstein in relation to his interest in sophistry and sophistics. Taking his 1987 volume The Sophist as a central text, the influence of a sense of sophistics is developed across his wider range of published works. This involves identifying some of the many different interpretations of the sophists throughout the history of philosophy, from the early dismissals by Plato and Aristotle to the more recent reappraisals of their works. A secondary aspect of the thesis is in examining the renewal of interest in the Ancient Greek sophists and suggesting some of the affinities between contemporary literary theory and poetics and the fragments of the works of the major sophists (primarily Protagoras and Gorgias). Finally, I suggest that The Sophist itself is a valuable and contemporaneous re-examination of sophistic ideas, that in fact goes further than those by academics from within philosophy and rhetoric by virtue of employing the stylistic innovations and linguistic experimentation that was so central to the sophistic approach.

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Nas obras iniciais (A Luta Corporal, 1953 e O Vil Metal, 1960) de Ferreira Gullar, o tema da morte na poesia de Ferreira Gullar conflui para uma reflexão sobre a transitoriedade dos seres e objetos perante a inexorabilidade do tempo. Nos Poemas de Cordel (1962-1967) e Dentro da Noite Veloz (1975), o poeta, com vestígios de sua poesia engajada, dá voz, identidade e nome ao homem comum que vive na sociedade e conseqüentemente à morte deste homem considerado trivial pelo meio em que está inserido, remetendo-nos à maneira como o início do século XX é diagnosticado por Ariès (1977): o período em que a morte se esconde, e que ele denomina como sendo a morte invertida. Desde então a sociedade expulsa a morte dos cidadãos comuns, sobrando apenas reverências aos homens de Estado. Gullar também denuncia a falta de atenção e desvelo da sociedade para com o homem sem status social. Em sua contestação, o poeta imortaliza, nomeia e dá identidade ao cidadão anônimo, que passa a ter voz no poema. Para preservar-se de uma ameaça de aniquilação pessoal, Gullar concebe o Poema Sujo (1975), composto de memória, perda, elaboração do mundo perdido e amor à vida. A partir de então, o tema da morte passa a ser cada vez mais constante na poética de Gullar. Não somente com a ameaça da própria morte, mas com a perda concreta de amigos e familiares, essa passa a ser concebida em sua poesia, com maior intensidade e sensibilidade. Em um crescente, a morte toma forma Na Vertigem do Dia (1980) e Barulhos (1987), adquirindo maior vigor em Muitas Vozes (1999). Em Rainer Maria Rilke e a morte (2004), há um diálogo iminente entre a poética de Gullar e Rilke. Neste, a morte aparece como uma figura alegórica que está em toda a parte, seja no interior, seja no exterior do indivíduo, sempre conspirando para que o momento fatal se realize. Ela é um germe que nasce no coração do homem e que se desenvolverá no decorrer de sua existência, tomando-lhe o corpo. No tom apropriado e na medida correta, Gullar homenageia e dá voz aos conceitos rilkeanos, sem com isso ferir-se enquanto poeta. Sob o prisma conceitual do lírico alemão, concede vida singular e respeitável à suposta circunstância da morte concreta de Rilke. / In Ferreira Gullars first books (A Luta Corporal, 1953 and O Vil Metal, 1960), the issue of death converges in his poetry towards a reflection about the transitoriness of all beings and objects in view of time inexorability. In Poemas de Cordel (popular poems that first emerged in the Northeast region) (1962-1967) and Dentro da Noite Veloz (1975), the poet gives voice, identity and name to the ordinary man living in society, and consequently to this mans death, considered trivial by the environment where he is inserted. It brings the reader to the way which the beginning of the 20th. century is diagnosed by Ariès (1977): the period when death is hidden, that he calls the inverted death. Since then society evicts death images from ordinary citizens, and what is left are reverences to statesmen. Gullar also denounces societys lack of attention and zeal with regards to man with no social status. In his challenge, the poet confers immortal identity to the anonymous citizen, who takes an active voice in the poem. In order to get preserved from the threat of his personal annihilation, Gullar conceives Poema Sujo (Dirty Poem) (1975) consisting of memory, elaboration of the lost world and love for life. From then on, the subject matter of death has increasingly become more constant in Gullars poetics. Not only under the threat of his own death, but after the concrete loss of friends and family members, death started to be conceived more intensely and with more sensitivity in his poetry. Death increasingly takes shape in Na Vertigem do Dia (1980) and Barulhos (1987), and thus achieves more strength in Muitas Vozes (1999). In Rainer Maria Rilke e a morte (2004), an imminent dialogue between Gullars and Rilkes poetics is established. Death appears in this latters works as an allegoric figure which is everywhere, either inside or outside the individual, always conspiring for the fatal time to be accomplished. It is a germ which sprouts in mans heart and will grow throughout his existence, taking over his body. With an appropriate note and the right measure, Gullar pays homage and gives voice to the Rilkean concepts, without erasing his own style as a poet. Under the conceptual prism of the German lyricist, he gives singular and respectable life to Rilkes supposed death circumstance.

Thesis advisor: Paul Mariani / The fireplace has long stood at the center of the American home, that hearth which requires work and duty and which offers warmth and transformation in return. Fireplaces: The Unmaking of the American Male Domestic Poet takes a look at three major twentieth-century men whose poetry manifests anxieties about staying home to "keep the fire-place burning and the music-box churning and the wheels of the baby's chariot turning," as Wallace Stevens described it (L 246), during a time of great literary change when their peers were widely expatriating to Europe. Fireplaces considers contemporary poet Stephen Dunn as an inheritor of this mottled Modernist lineage of male lyric domesticity in the Northeastern United States, a tradition rattled by the terrorist events of September 11, 2001 after which Dunn leaves his wife and family home to remarry, thus razing the longstanding domestic frame of his poems. Ultimately Fireplaces leaves us with a question for twenty-first century verse--can a male poet still write about home? Or has the local domestic voice been supplanted at last by a placeless strain of lyric. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

In this dissertation, I argue that self-translators embody a borderline sense of hybridity, both linguistically and culturally, and that the act of translation, along with its innate in-betweenness, is the context in which self-translators negotiate their fragmented identities and cultures. I use the poetry of Urayoán Noel, Juan Gelman, and Yolanda Castaño to demonstrate that they each uniquely use the process of self-translation, in conjunction with a bilingual presentation, to articulate their modern, hybrid identities. In addition, I argue that as a result, the act of self-translation establishes an interliminal space of enunciation that not only reflects an intercultural exchange consistent with hybridity, but fosters further cultural and linguistic interaction. As a manifestation of their hybrid sensibilities, each of these three poets employs the process of self-translation as an extension of their poetic themes, including a critique and parody of postmodern globalization, reappropriation of language to combat forces of oppression and deterritorialization, or a socio-linguistic representation of bilingual life in a stateless nation from the perspective of a minority language. Self-translation highlights the interliminality between languages, establishing a “third space” of communication that transcends the incomplete communicative ability of each of the two languages. When presented bilingually, self-translation foregrounds the act of translation; the presence of both languages not only encourages interaction between the two languages, but also draws attention to the act of translation, instead of obscuring it in a layer of transparency. This brings the reader to ponder the act of translation and the relationship between languages, ultimately enabling the reader to more fully appreciate the generative qualities of translation.

Although many critics, and Eavan Boland herself, have written about how her poetry functions to reclaim the Irish feminine image from its static position as lyric representation of the nation, much remains to be said about how Boland represents and reimagines Ireland in her poetry. Using the metaphor of cartography, which Boland frequently refers to in her writing, I argue that she lyrically "maps" the nation across space, time, and language. Her palimpsestic poetic maps of Ireland include what a mere pictorial representation could never, and what prior male-written poetry never did, show: the space of a Dublin suburb, the history of her marriage, the mental scarring of an imposed English language represented as physical fractures on skin or land. Her own subjectivity is the most important component of this map, and so she liberally inserts fragments of her own life into pre-existing national narratives. Through close readings of poems published between 1990 and 2007, I explore how Boland mixes national history, geography, family stories, and memories of her own life to arrive at a poetic "structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers / the inner secret of it" (ITV 47). This is not a truth about history, nor merely a declaration that women, particularly Irish women, have been silenced in poetry and history. Instead, the inner secret is her own recognition of the connection between herself and the women of whom she writes, as well as her readers; that the framework she builds from pieces of the past provides a way to understand our current selves. Boland remains conscious of the constructed nature of this framework in each poem where she challenges official narratives and maps of the nation, replacing their truth with her own. She loads specific places, histories, and uses of language, as well as the ideas of these things themselves, with complex and even contradictory meanings. Her poems represent not the truth but a truth, and one which has been carefully crafted at that. Put together, these explorations of "Ireland" and all its various truths constitute an imaginative map of the nation as she perceives it.

Although many critics, and Eavan Boland herself, have written about how her poetry functions to reclaim the Irish feminine image from its static position as lyric representation of the nation, much remains to be said about how Boland represents and reimagines Ireland in her poetry. Using the metaphor of cartography, which Boland frequently refers to in her writing, I argue that she lyrically "maps" the nation across space, time, and language. Her palimpsestic poetic maps of Ireland include what a mere pictorial representation could never, and what prior male-written poetry never did, show: the space of a Dublin suburb, the history of her marriage, the mental scarring of an imposed English language represented as physical fractures on skin or land. Her own subjectivity is the most important component of this map, and so she liberally inserts fragments of her own life into pre-existing national narratives. Through close readings of poems published between 1990 and 2007, I explore how Boland mixes national history, geography, family stories, and memories of her own life to arrive at a poetic "structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers / the inner secret of it" (ITV 47). This is not a truth about history, nor merely a declaration that women, particularly Irish women, have been silenced in poetry and history. Instead, the inner secret is her own recognition of the connection between herself and the women of whom she writes, as well as her readers; that the framework she builds from pieces of the past provides a way to understand our current selves. Boland remains conscious of the constructed nature of this framework in each poem where she challenges official narratives and maps of the nation, replacing their truth with her own. She loads specific places, histories, and uses of language, as well as the ideas of these things themselves, with complex and even contradictory meanings. Her poems represent not the truth but a truth, and one which has been carefully crafted at that. Put together, these explorations of "Ireland" and all its various truths constitute an imaginative map of the nation as she perceives it.

This thesis project analyzes the influence of T.S. Eliot, named "the first Cambridge poet" by Jeremy Noel-Tod, on Cambridge poets Andrew Crozier and Peter Riley, particularly through their representations of the quotidian. At stake is the larger question: what is the often hidden effect of the objects that surround us in daily life? Or even--what is the value of daily life? By extension, their representation of the quotidian directly affects their depiction of the physical environment allowing for an ecocritical debate in which landscape determines how individuals place themselves in a familiar physical environment defined by tradition, culture, and the routine. Regarding the influence of landscape on the poet, Eliot said, "[m]y poetry, like that of other poets, shows traces of every environment in which I have lived." He, of course, was not referring to Nature, but how social geographies encapsulate traditions, culture, and language, in what can be classified as ecologically-informed memories. One section of this project addresses the present scholarly (mis)interpretation of ecocritism, moving it beyond a discourse of global sustainability or sustainable environmental practices to a more distinct focus in what phenomenologists refer to an ecological sphere of existence in which the daily lives of people become inseparable from the environments in which they have lived.