The poet Larry Levis often employed ekphrasis as an elegiac device—particularly with his verbal descriptions of photographic images—to explore human suffering and reconcile feelings of loss. Through the ekphrastic mode, Levis could juxtapose otherwise disparate images, manipulating their temporal and spatial relationships, to achieve what he conceived an authentic portrait of the human experience. The poet, through his verbal descriptions of photographic images, does not try to evade the pain or joy of being human; instead, he confronts his grief directly and, in so doing, transcends that suffering to better understand himself and his own human position. This thesis analyzes the following poems by Larry Levis: “My Only Photograph of Weldon Kees,” “García Lorca: A Photograph of the Granada Cemetery, 1966,” “The Assimilation of the Gypsies,” “Sensationalism,” and “Photograph: Migrant Worker, Parlier, California, 1967.”
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:vcu.edu/oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-1401 |
| Date | 30 July 2012 |
| Creators | Miner, Lauren |
| Publisher | VCU Scholars Compass |
| Source Sets | Virginia Commonwealth University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | © The Author |
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