"Improvisation without Accompaniment" is a lyric investigation into the ways that an awareness of mutability and death can clarify or distort our experience of the world. The poems in this collection draw upon the speaker's small-town Texas upbringing to explore broader questions that arise as a consequence of his burgeoning awareness of mortality: What are the moral imperatives for an individual citizen in a larger political community? What are the bidirectional effects of our relationship with place and the environment? Given the painful transience of human experience, what does it mean to live a good life? The book is characterized by psychological poems that illustrate the mind's movement, poems that use syntactic variation and tonal shifts to indicate an openness to changes of heart and mind. "What Passes Here for Mountains," an in-progress poetry manuscript, is driven by a similar impulse to explore the precise ways that our beliefs and opinions affect our immediate experience. These newer poems address anxieties about climate change, the effects of childhood trauma on the adults those children become, and the obstacles to self-actualization.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1703355 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Morton, Matthew Travis |
| Contributors | Marks, Corey, Bond, Bruce, Dubrow, Jenanne, Vanhoutte, Jacqueline |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | iv, 111 pages, Text |
| Rights | Public, Morton, Matthew Travis, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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