A collection of poetry, divided into three sections. The poems in all three sections are in free verse and the tone varies throughout. / The first section explores family relationships and the speaker's affiliations with family and herself. In these poems, the speaker gradually comes to terms with family members and with portions of her history. Many of these poems are rooted in class and place. The speaker's family is working class, and this is reflected in some of the "tugboat" poems; hence the title of the dissertation. Staten Island, New York, particularly the 1960s Staten Island of the speaker's childhood, was more reflective of rural New Jersey and upstate New York than the more suburban borough it has now become. It is the milieu for much of this work. / In the second section, the focus is on "the other"--historical, political, and other, characters--who are mainly unknown to the speaker and are analyzed or celebrated here. These figures include Mary Magdalene as well as Breyten Breytenbach. Also incorporated here are "Things Said While Dead: The Virginia Woolf Letters," which are poems written in, what I imagine to be, Woolf's voice, if Woolf had composed poetry. In them, Woolf speaks to the important figures in her life: her husband, Leonard Woolf, her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, and her sister, Vanessa. These poems, which are both resolutions and explanations, have been influenced by current research on the sexual abuse perpetrated on Woolf and information on her sexual and emotional lives. / Section three chronicles the speaker's relationship to her partners and to herself as a woman and artist. Issues are resolved here and the speaker celebrates her revelations. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-04, Section: A, page: 1228. / Major Professor: Van K. Brock. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78232 |
| Contributors | Decker, Donna., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 68 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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