The literary criticism of the so-called cult of Southern femininity in the fiction and drama of Southern writers is well established. However, there is little criticism regarding these figures in Southern poetry. In response to this gap in scholarship, this study examines the changing representations of the belle or lady in Southern poetry from the early nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. She appears in poems written by white and African American men and women from three distinct historical and literary periods in the South: the antebellum period, the post-bellum period, and the twentieth century. This study examines the manner in which these different groups of poets in each period represent her. The overall trend of Southern poetry’s portrayal of women through these periods is that it moves from an idealized and mythical image in the antebellum period to a more realistic image in the twentieth century.

This dissertation consists of a collection of sixty pages of poetry of various styles and forms, predominately in free verse. Subject matter includes family and relationships, especially between women of different generations; history, both personal/family and public; language; means of handling grief and death; travel and return; and sense of place/home. As a writer, I often find myself taking moments from my own life and transforming them into poems. All language fascinates me, especially words that are closely tied to the culture from which they emerge. Several poems in the collection rely on unusual, untranslatable, or forgotten words. These poems explore the relationships between place, history, culture, and language. All of these are intertwined, and it is often difficult to extract one element and study it discretely from the rest. Additionally, history, both collective and personal, often provides a stimulus for my poems and is useful in bridging the gap between personal memories and associations and those of the reading audience. I often approach the past through photographs, physical objects, or landscapes, or share stories of my own family’s history. Many of these poems are about questioning one’s own ancestry. I create myths about myself and others, often my own family and ancestors, building a story around a particular truth. In these poems, I rewrite my own history and experiences.

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Book Summary: The state of Tennessee is widely recognized as a home of great music, and its geographic regions are as distinct as Memphis blues, Nashville country, and Bristol old-time sounds. Tennessee’s literary heritage offers equal variety and quality, as home to the Fugitive Agrarian Poets, as well as a signature voice from the Black Arts Movement. Few states present such a multicultural panorama as does the Volunteer State.The poems in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee engage the storied histories, diverse cultures, and vibrant rural and urban landscapes of the region. Among the more than 120 poets represented are Pulitzer and Bollingen Prize-winner Charles Wright, Brittingham Award-winner Lynn Powell, and Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize-winners Rick Hilles and Arthur Smith.The book includes an introduction from renowned poet Jeff Daniel Marion, who in 1978 received the first literary fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission. Too, the book celebrates relatively young and gifted voices. This important anthology will stand for many years as the definitive poetic document for the state of Tennessee.Conceived by Series Editor William Wright in 2003, The Southern Poetry Anthology is a multivolume project celebrating established and emerging poets of the American South. Inspired by single-volume anthologies such as Leon Stokesbury’s The Made Thing, Gil Allen’s A Ninety-Six Sampler, and Guy Owen and Mary C. Williams’ Contemporary Southern Poetry: an Anthology, The Southern Poetry Anthology aspires to provide readers with a documentary-like survey of the best poetry being written in the American South at the present moment.Published exclusively by Texas Review Press, the series provides the most comprehensive representation of Southern poets currently available and is currently being used in university classrooms across the South.

These poems represent the vanishing world of the South and that tale is perpetuated by a series of fathers and sons which often act as the narrators. Each father passes his knowledge of language, hunting, lore, loss, and even sins onto the sons who repeat the tradition. The voice and age of the narrators evolves from the heavily dialectical to a more educated and contemplative voice as the thesis progresses.

Although Paul Hamilton Hayne was the acknowledged poet laureate of the South at the time of his death in 1886, he and his poetry have virtually disappeared from the recent American literary histories and anthologies. Even the literary histories and anthologies of Southern literature tend to down play his role as a man of letters and poet of consequence. This diminution of Hayne's literary reputation has taken place despite the respect for his poetry and criticism that came from leading poets and critics in the United States and England during the mid to late nineteenth century. In this thesis, I analyze the neglect of Hayne's work by first outlining his reception history as a poet. Certain trends are evident, specifically a movement in the United States away from the Anglo-American tradition to a new style of poetry, best represented by Walt Whitman. This change in what was fashionable in poetry has had the effect of undermining Hayne's reputation as a poet. Moreover, Hayne's literary reputation became more tenuous after the War Between the States given his strong affiliation with the conquered Confederacy. To bolster my argument that Hayne's reputation ought not be left to the whims of literary fashion, I conduct a preliminary examination of Hayne's poetry by analyzing several poems. I conclude, after examining the evidence, that Hayne deserves inclusion in the literary canons of American and Southern literature as an important representative nineteenth-century Southern poet writing within the Anglo-American tradition. / Master of Arts

This study explores the profound influence of the South on the poetry of Robert Penn Warren and creates an oral interpretation lecture-recital script illustrating this influences. The study shows Warren's poetry to be worthy of consideration. The study also defines oral interpretation, lecture recital, and poet-centered programs. Included with a biographical sketch of Warren is a chronological listing of works and events in his life. There are discussions of several poems which illustrate the influence of the Southern landscape and several which show the influence of the Southern people. The forty-five minute lecture-recital script is included as an appendix,

History, both collective and personal, often provides a stimulus for Southern poets and is useful in bridging the gap between the writers' personal memories and associations and those of the reading audience. The critical introduction to this collection explores connections between personal and shared history in the works of Natasha Trethewey, Betty Adcock, and Kathryn Stripling Byer. These poets convey their own connections to the past through reacting to historical photographs, relaying their own experiences during natural disasters, and setting private incidents within their larger historical contexts. These poets also suggest that time is concentric and malleable, and that history is essentially changed through its retelling. Poems offer a chance to rewrite one's own history. In the final section, I show that historical connections are treated similarly in my own work and that, through making associations with history, my poems also attempt to rewrite the past.

Jim Wayne Miller’s poetry examines how human history and topography join to create place. His work often incorporates images of land and ecology; it deliberately questions the delineation between place and self. This thesis explores how Miller presents images of water to describe the relationship between inhabitants and their location, both with the positive image of the spring and the negative image of the flood. Additionally, this thesis examines how the Brier, Miller’s most prominent persona character, grieves his separation from home and ultimately finds healing and reunification of the self through his return to the hills. In his poetry, Miller argues that an essential piece of people’s identity is linked with the land, and, through recognition of the importance of topography on the development of the self, individuals can foster a deeper sense of community through appreciation of their place.