The author launches a triptych journey into his poetic psyche. The first section of poems explores the socio-political landscape of the postwar, postholocaustic world. The traveler rejects the semi-seductive allures of anomie to which too many modern poets have succumbed. "Complacencies of the peignoir," the minor, mundane sell-outs of spirit and heart are kleig light back-lighted to reveal the grotesque contortions that destroy. Courage and the simple heart are sung. / A strain of koto drifts through the second section in which the poet-traveler records his encounter with the Orient--its philosophies, histories, scents and sinners. Hard learning, transcendence and grace are the general themes of the book, and in this section, particularly, a soft suffusing and diffusing mystic light transforms and lingers, calls forward and back. / To section three. Beginning with an epigraph from Emerson; "Let us affront the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times," the poet salutes various literati who did just that. Jonathan Edwards, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Dickinson, Whitman and Osip Mandelstam comprise a pantheon whose courage, Godliness and/or human sympathy can inspire and direct our paths during this parlous era of transition and confusion when the chrysalis must be self-shattered so we may summon our new being forth. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: A, page: 3719. / Major Professor: Van Brock. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77770 |
| Contributors | Corseri, Gary Steven., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 88 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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