The purpose of this project was to prepare a script for group interpretation based upon the theme of "alienation" as it occurs in selected works of contemporary American poets. The script was produced for an audience on the North Texas State University campus under the direction of the writer. The thesis includes the script, a discussion of the process of adaptation, and an evaluation of the production. The evaluation is based, in part upon the written critiques of four expert guest critics.

This dissertation comprises two parts: Part I, which discusses use of second person pronoun in contemporary American poetry; and Part II, The Museum of Coming Apart, which is a collection of poems. As confessional verse became a dominant mode in American poetry in the late 1950s and early 60s, so too did the use of the first-person pronoun. Due in part to the excesses of later confessionalism, however, many contemporary poets hesitate to use first person for fear that their work might be read as autobiography. The poetry of the 1990s and early 2000s has thus been characterized by distance, dissociation, and fracture as poets attempt to remove themselves from the overtly emotional and intimate style of the confessionals. However, other contemporary poets have sought to straddle the line between the earnestness and linearity of confessionalism and the intellectually playful yet emotionally detached poetry of the moment. One method for striking this balance is to employ the second person pronoun. Because "you" in English is ambiguous, it allows the poet to toy with the level of distance in a poem and create evolving relationships between the speaker and reader. Through the analysis of poems by C. Dale Young, Paul Guest, Richard Hugo, Nick Flynn, Carrie St. George Comer, and Moira Egan, this essay examines five common ways second person is employed in contemporary American poetry-the use of "you" in reference to a specific individual, the epistolary form, the direct address to the reader, the imperative voice, and the use of "you" as a substitute for "I"-and the ways that the second-person pronoun allows these poems to take the best of both the confessional and dissociative modes.

In this work, I explain that the focus of criticism on the Central American poetry of the second half of the twentieth century has emphasized its political content. I argue, however, that such a limited view obscures the broader import of this poetry and its place in Latin American literature. By reading the work of Nicaraguan Daisy Zamora, Guatemalan Otto René Castillo, and Salvadoran Roque Dalton with an emphasis on affectivity rather than revolution, I suggest a different relationship between the poet and society, one that is not limited to the marginal figure of the mujer soldado, the poeta guerrillero or the poeta marxista in conflict with all societal norms. Rather, I argue that my study portrays the complex subjectivity of the speaker/poet not unlike that of non-revolutionary poets, as well as his or her multi-dimensional affective connections to family and society. At the same time, an analysis of affect in this poetry allows us to reconsider the nature of the revolutionary figure itself, no longer a myth or a romantic hero, but an individual inserted in society in a more complex way. In Chapter 1, “Daisy Zamora: De la mujer-soldado a la mujer-mujer”, I contend that an analysis of affectivity of her poetic work reveals how personal memory constructs an individualized subjectivity different from that of a woman-soldier. In the second chapter, “Otto René Castillo: De la lucha revolucionaria a la soledad del poema,” I argue that a negative connotation of romantic love is projected in his poems bringing about traces of existential solitude in the lyric subjectivity. Furthermore, Castillo’s poetry elicits a binary opposition between “the people” and the guerrillero in which the former is portrayed as lacking of agency. The third chapter, “Roque Dalton: y/o subjetividad en crisis,” reveals the ways in which the Salvadoran poet textualizes a poetic of disenchantment by way of projecting disdain and contempt to the “motherland.” In conclusion, my approach pinpoints how Zamora, Castillo and Dalton share the same preoccupations, affects and ways to conceive reality, which are also similar to the practices of those poets whose works are better-known given their national origin or because their poetic production has been widely studied by academia. This document has been written in Spanish. / text

"The award selected for this paper was the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, one of the major literary awards and one of the few to be offered by a university. The purpose of this study is to present a brief history of the award itself and to give a critical evaluation of the works of the recipients"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1958." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Sarah Rebeccca Reed, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-74).

This dissertation investigates Allen Ginsberg's Beat poetry within the framework of twentieth-century literary developments, from modernism to postmodernism. It is argued that Beat writing is founded on a rejection of the detached, intellectual and formal nature of the high modernism which came to be institutionalised in the American literary practice of the 1950s. Beat poetry rejects this tradition in favour of an eclectic assemblage of ideas which may, either through direct influence or through parallel development, be linked to certain avant-garde modernist movements. All of these movements share assumptions which support and echo the personal and spiritual vision of Beat aesthetics, as well as its formal experimentation. This eclectic assemblage also involves the assimilation of the ideas of modernist movements often held to be in conflict, embodying opposing strains of modernism. This dynamic is illustrated by analysing the influence of two such opposing modernist influences on Ginsberg's Beat poetry, namely imagism and surrealism. Finally, it is argued that this double gesture of a rejection of the institutionalised form of high modernism and a simultaneous re-assessment of the avant-garde constitutes a crucial step in the development towards postmodernism. Together with the surfacing of postmodernist characteristics in Ginsberg's Beat poetry, this forms the basis for the conclusion that Ginsberg's Beat poetry may be regarded as playing a transitional and initiating role in the literary evolution from modernism to postmodernism. / Thesis (MA)--PU for CHE, 1999.

This dissertation investigates Allen Ginsberg's Beat poetry within the framework of twentieth-century literary developments, from modernism to postmodernism. It is argued that Beat writing is founded on a rejection of the detached, intellectual and formal nature of the high modernism which came to be institutionalised in the American literary practice of the 1950s. Beat poetry rejects this tradition in favour of an eclectic assemblage of ideas which may, either through direct influence or through parallel development, be linked to certain avant-garde modernist movements. All of these movements share assumptions which support and echo the personal and spiritual vision of Beat aesthetics, as well as its formal experimentation. This eclectic assemblage also involves the assimilation of the ideas of modernist movements often held to be in conflict, embodying opposing strains of modernism. This dynamic is illustrated by analysing the influence of two such opposing modernist influences on Ginsberg's Beat poetry, namely imagism and surrealism. Finally, it is argued that this double gesture of a rejection of the institutionalised form of high modernism and a simultaneous re-assessment of the avant-garde constitutes a crucial step in the development towards postmodernism. Together with the surfacing of postmodernist characteristics in Ginsberg's Beat poetry, this forms the basis for the conclusion that Ginsberg's Beat poetry may be regarded as playing a transitional and initiating role in the literary evolution from modernism to postmodernism. / Thesis (MA)--PU for CHE, 1999.

For Muscogee Creek poet Joy Harjo, poetry is a real world force that can empower the reader by utilizing mythic memory, recovery of history, and a spiral journey to regain communal identity. Her poetic career transforms from early lyric poems to a hybridized form of prosody, prose, and myth to accommodate and to reflect Harjo's concerns as they progress from personal, to tribal, and then to global. She often employs a witnessing strategy to combat the trauma caused by racism in order to create the possibility for renewal and healing. Furthermore, Harjo's poetry combats forces that seek to define Native American existence negatively. To date, Harjo's poetic works create a myth that will refocus humanity's attention on the way in which historical meaning is produced and the way difference is encountered. In an effort to revise the dominant stories told about Indians, Harjo privileges the idea that Native Americans are present and human, and it is this sense of humanity that pervades her poetry. Sequentially, Joy Harjo's volumes of poetry-She Had Some Horses (1983), In Mad Love and War (1990), and The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994)-create a regenerative cycle that combats the effects of oppressive history and racism. Through her poetry, violent and tragic events are transformed into moments of hope and renewal. Her collections are powerful testimonies of endurance and survival. They directly defy the stereotype of the "vanishing" or "stoic" Indian, but more importantly, they offer regeneration and grace to all peoples. The poems create a map to help navigate the multiple simultaneous realms of existence, to find a way to travel through the barriers that separate existence. In this dissertation, I employ various reading strategies to support my contentions. Blending a postcolonial standpoint with feminism, I believe Harjo uses a feminist ethnic bildungsroman to explain how a woman of color achieves maturation of self-identity given the many layers of restrictions that act to muffle her voice. Utilizing mediational theory, I study the way in which Harjo's poetry addresses multiple audiences in an attempt to achieve renewal. Furthermore, I posit that Harjo questions the validity of history, and through her retelling of the historical narrative, she impacts the collective consciousness of a nation in an attempt to combat the ill effects of historical trauma. Finally, Joseph Campbell's ideas about the sustaining power of myth, an idea shared by many Native Americans, shapes my arguments regarding Harjo's use of myth as a source of renewal and strength.

The purpose of this study is to examine the position of twentieth century American poetry at the mid-point of the century to ascertain whether contemporary poetry--poetry written in the fifties and sixties--has been justly relegated to the obscure position which it now occupies.

The problem with which this study is concerned is that of determining the role of war and social revolution in Afro-American poetry of the 1960's. For this study, four major poets were selected: Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, LeRoi Jones, and Don L. Lee.

This dissertation examines the influence of film on the poetry of H.D., Marianne Moore, and Adrienne Rich. It builds on scholarship by Susan McCabe (2005), Lawrence Goldstein (1994) and others, who have traced the way twentieth-century American poets reacted formally to film culture in their writing. My project responds to the call of the editors of the volume of Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism for critics to interrogate how authors harnessed the aesthetic and political possibilities opened up by cinema. This study draws from theories of feminist film phenomenology by Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks to analyze the aims and arguments of the texts. The literary works studied include: H.D.’s Sea Garden, “Projector” series, Trilogy, Helen in Egypt, and film essays; Marianne Moore’s animal poems from the 1930s and early 1940s and film essays; and Adrienne Rich’s The Will to Change. This dissertation argues that the poets drew from film to renovate their poetic vision and forms and ply at questions of power, visuality, and bodies. The poems articulate an awareness of the filmic gaze and how it constructs feminine or animal others. Through careful analysis of the poems, this dissertation locates each poet’s particular rapport with film and how it influenced her literary style and prompted her to challenge dominant patriarchal scripts. This dissertation makes several original contributions to twentieth-century Anglo-American poetry scholarship. It sets these three authors alongside one another to reveal how their engagements with film inspired their poetics and politics at various points throughout the twentieth century. The conclusions herein determine how the poets turned to film to construct their poetic projects. The dissertation offers new readings of the work of H.D., Moore and Rich as queer women poets invested in film culture. / Graduate