The following poems are variations on the personal narrative poem. Most clearly influenced by the post-confessional lyric poets, who continue to introduce hitherto-taboo subject matter in the manner of the confessional poets but who have also transformed the use of the personal by bringing lyric strategies to bear on autobiographical material, I, too, use the strategies which Gregory Orr articulates as an implementation of Eros, Sympathy, Symbol, and Proportionate Ego; subsequently, these poems work to display the lyric longing for transcendence and enact the dramatic premise that this world's forces upon a being create it. My father and mother continue to figure prominently in these poems, and, now married, I explore both the beauty of such intimacy as well as the interspersed relational angst. Though I write largely about or with my own experience in mind, a number of these poems are also attempts at social portraiture or persona poems that explore another's experience. My dissertation is comprised of writing that attempts to exteriorize the interior (as Marianne Moore declared of Elizabeth Bishop's writing; she exemplifies this aesthetic and, as such, is one of my models) while allowing a profound sense of the personal to be a connector to human experience at large: therefore, poems of illness and healing, both psychological and physical; poems of desperation, in response to war and other circumstances of reality, as well as the stark understanding that language fails us'or we fail it; love poems, many and many of them, of motley sorts, offer a thematic under girding to these poems of the complexity of a living that both breaks us and is broken by us. The simultaneous and often paradoxical theme also present in these poems is that recognizing beauty, delight, and joy should not, perhaps cannot, be neglected or excluded from the human experience. Given these multiple aims, my work seeks to abide in W.H. Auden's assertion that the role of poetry is not emotional transport or political transformation but the perception of truth and the affirmation of an imperfect world. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2007. / March 23, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. / David Kirby, Professor Directing Dissertation; Amy Koehlinger, Outside Committee Member; James Kimbrell, Committee Member; Barbara Hamby, Committee Member; Nancy Warren, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_183586 |
| Contributors | Childress, Susanna (authoraut), Kirby, David (professor directing dissertation), Koehlinger, Amy (outside committee member), Kimbrell, James (committee member), Hamby, Barbara (committee member), Warren, Nancy (committee member), Department of English (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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