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This thesis is a collection of poetry written between 1970 and 1975. The quality of the poems is admittedly uneven, but the inclusion of earlier, weaker poems may indicate a progression in the areas of flexibility, control of material, and strength of poetic voice. The poems are arranged into five sections, entitled "Love," "Rabbits," Poetry about Poetry," "Religion and Ancestors," and "Henry. Poems collected here are intended to demonstrate that experimentation with various forms contributes to an increased ability to control poetic material and technique. By confining a poem to particular forms, one is forced to be more creative, imaginative, and exact. Both control and flexibility are important in contemporary poetry, and my hope is that the following poems demonstrate a balance of those qualities.

Thesis advisor: Jeffery Bloechl / This dissertation articulates Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of nature in relation to the existential condition of "natality," as defined by Arendt. Where Heidegger emphasizes mortality in his post-metaphysical ontology, these investigations follow Merleau-Ponty and Arendt who emphasize that humans are not only mortals but "natals," beings who begin. The project has a twofold aim: 1. to present an exegesis of Merleau-Ponty's oeuvre with a special emphasis on the Nature Courses and 2. to sketch out a natal ontology in its own right. This ontology depends on Merleau-Ponty's methodological advancement beyond genetic phenomenology to generative and "poetic" phenomenology, a practice that incorporates historicity and expressivity. He offers a critique of science, particularly of evolutionary biology, that is shown to be relevant in a contemporary context. His natal ontology co-emerges with an ethical standpoint; he shows that a natural prereflective relation to a plurality of others, rather than only a single other, fundamentally conditions human existence. In a natal ontology, knowledge depends on being born with others, through a co-naissance of one's worldly situation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Paul Celan (1920-1970), the Jewish poet of German descent, lived through the greatest catastrophe of European Jewry of the modern age. He survived, as his parents and innumerable others did not, and dedicated his writing, his voice, to the reality he had witnessed. It would be a mistake, however, to think of him solely as a "Jewish" poet, a term he considered anti-Semitic (see Christina Ivanovic's '''All poets are Jews:' Paul Celan's Reading of Marina Tsvetaeva"). Celan wrote of the world as such; a world that was able to reorganize itself towards the annihilation of countless human beings. In its midst, he questioned how one could live, how brotherhood could still be possible, and how a God could possibly appear in such a place. This thesis follows his questioning and pursues, along with him, the course of poetry and poetic language through the appearance of atrocity.

This thesis examines the poetics of Odysseas Elytis, which, it is argued, emerged from his intense theoretical work on poetry in the period between 1944 and 1960, and was crystallized in the poems he published from 1960 to 1995. Elytis' poetics is examined in this thesis through the exploration of his ideas on the status and function of poetry, on the role of the poet, and on poetic writing; it is also examined through the exploration of the poetry in which these ideas are put into practice. It is argued in this thesis that Elytis' poetics emerged from his effort to provide his poetry with a concrete theoretical basis, an endeavour he deliberately undertook in the 1940s and 1950s; the evolution of his thought coincided chronologically with the period broadly between 1944 and 1960, that is, the period during which he wrote poems but did not proceed to publish any book of poetry. Elytis' thought reached a point of external stabilization before 1960, since in the poetry he published that year his ideas are systematically put into practice. With the publication of these poems, his poetics entered the dynamic phase of crystallization, which prevails throughout his poetic writing from 1960 to 1995, and constitutes a process during the course of which he explored the internal perspectives opened up by the theoretical frame he set for himself in the years 1944-1960. This thesis explores Elytis' theoretical endeavour and his poetic practice, and examines both the emergence of his ideas in the period between 1944 and 1960 and the crystallization of these ideas in the poetry he published from 1960 to 1995.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, now known chiefly for her letters, was in her own day famous as a minor poet. This thesis discusses her verse in various genres, relating it to the conventions within which it was written and to the writer's particular interests and aims. It prints the text of all known verse by, or probably by, Lady Mary, with full textual apparatus and explanatory notes. As far as possible all manuscript and printed sources have been collated, their variants recorded, the poems dated, their origins explained, and parallels in other writers listed.