Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, January 2009. / Electronic version restricted until 26th January 2014.

Part i of the thesis, The Many Selves of Simic: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Poetry of Charles Simic, examines various “selves” out of which Charles Simic’s poetry grows: Simic the American poet, Simic the visual artist, Simic the agnostic theologian, and Simic the humorist. By drawing on scholarship from a variety of disciplines, the thesis accounts for numerous contexts and tensions within which Simic’s poetry has developed. Chapter One explores what it means to refer to Simic as an American poet. In the process, it analyzes the meaningfulness of the construct “American poetry” and identifies several of its key features alongside Simic’s own understanding of this tradition. Finally, it delineates the way Simic has grafted himself into the tradition of American poetry. Chapter Two analyzes the centrality of visual art to the way Simic construes the figurative space created by a poem. It connects Simic’s poetry to the work of the American collage and shadow box artist Joseph Cornell and argues that Simic approaches poems as distinctly physical entities that possess spatial extension. Lastly, it compares Simic’s spatial poetics to those of the American poet Charles Olson. Chapter Three analyzes Simic’s fascination with Christian mysticism alongside his perpetual agnosticism. It argues that Simic’s poetic via negativa incorporates aspects of both medieval and deconstructionist postmodern forms of negation. It then compares Simic’s mysticism with that of Charles Wright and Mark Strand. Chapter Four argues that Simic’s “desire for irreverence” provides the center of gravity that holds together his various “selves.” The chapter delineates the various emotional registers of Simic’s work and analyzes them alongside theories of humor. Finally, it considers the various comedic influences on the formal strategies of Simic’s work. Part ii of the thesis, Tannic Acid Sweetheart, consists of my own poems.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2008-08-08Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T21:03:23Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 dourado_mc_dr_arafcl.pdf: 1827767 bytes, checksum: 5a4aec2d81bd84a3734b307282907c7f (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Esta tese tem como objetivo evidenciar as relações existentes entre história e poesia, buscando as representações da guerra ou de situações de conflitos político-sociais na poesia lírica contemporânea. O trabalho tem como corpus as poesias de Charles Simic e de Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna. A base teórica pressupõe estudos acerca da concepção de poesia de teóricos influentes, como Hayden White, Theodor Adorno e Octavio Paz. Durante a análise dos poemas, são privilegiados alguns princípios e conceitos concernentes à “nova história”, mais particularmente os defendidos por historiadores como Jacques le Goff e Michel de Certeau, representantes da terceira geração dessa corrente. Os resultados confirmam que os poemas de Simic e de Sant’Anna ilustram as possibilidades de leitura de uma época histórica, bem como dos fatos e dos personagens nela inseridos. Os poetas trazem a história para dentro de seus poemas para salientar o compromisso da literatura com as realidades que os cercam. / This dissertation explores the connections between history and poetry. It investigates the representations of war or social-political conflicts in contemporary lyrical poetry. The corpus of the work is comprised of poems by Charles Simic and by Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna. The theoretical support comes from the studies about the conceptions of poetry by influential theorists such as Hayden White, Theodor Adorno and Octavio Paz. Along the analyses of the poems, I draw, mainly, upon the principles used by “new history”, more specifically, by historians such as Jacques Le Goff and Michel de Certeau. The results confirm that Simic’s and Sant’Anna’s poetry demonstrate the possibilities of a reading of a historical moment, as well as its facts and participants. The two poets incorporate history to their poems to emphasize the commitment of literature with the realities that surround them.

This paper examines assimilation and double-consciousness in the poetry of Charles Simic, Marilyn Chin, and Susan Atefat-Peckham. Each of these three poets writes in English in an American setting but has a different heritage. Simic is a native Yugoslavian (Serbia) who fled Europe during WWII. Chin arrived in the U.S. from Hong Kong as a child, and Atefat-Peckham is a first-generation American raised by Iranian parents. Each of these poets expresses some degree of assimilation and double-consciousness (as described by various theorists including W.E.B. Du Bois and Werner Sollors, among others) through the form and content of their poetry. This paper compares the three poets' work, attempting to draw inferences on how double-consciousness and assimilation is expressed in their poems and to what degree. This study argues that Simic is the least assimilated (as his poetry portrays the most severe double-consciousness), Chin is in-between and Atefat-Peckham the most assimilated.