English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

5-3-1973

Abstract

Maps is about myself, "the map is an exact abstract/of what happens out on the road" says the poet and the road is a tortuous one. The events it occasions are sometimes cosmological as in "Numbers" and "Twelve Notes" where an archetypal numerology orders the poet's vision. At other times the vision is a surreal visitation like those in "Six Visitations." But the bulk of the poetry like the bulk of experience is literal. "Barnstable Harbor," "A Dirty Movie," "Fishing" and others try simply to state with Zen-like clarity the literal truth of the poet's experience. In these poems the poet relies more on the nature of language and its innate capacity to communicate than on his personal vision. There is working here a belief that language like Blake's, "grain of sand," even when seemingly mundane, is grounded in the universal. "Messages" may be read as a set of signs along the poet's road and like Olson's universe they are a "discreet and continuous" series of events. The rand is not without its whimsical moments. "Fair" and "An Angle of Shooting" are instances where the poet had occasion to chuckle in the face of Oedipus and Neptune.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

Gene Frumkin

Second Committee Member

Lee McKay Johnson

Third Committee Member

Ernest Warnock Tedlock Jr.

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

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