Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1998

Thesis Director

Peggy L. Brayfield

Abstract

A poet must find some sort of ground to stand on and must incorporate what the poet sees into words that can relay a message. The topic becomes the muse as the poet looks for a school of poetry that it can lead him or her to. I chose the war in Croatia as my muse, and looked to it to help me find my way to belonging to the school of war poets and to lead others to the truth about this war, which in turn inspired the poetry that forms my thesis.

The war affected me because I am Croatian. I wrote the poetry because I would like to consider myself a poet. I tried to unify these two aspects of my person in the thesis as a whole.

Perhaps anyone can write poetry, but the challenge is to then rank yourself with your mentors while analyzing your own words. I dissect my work for all readers as I discuss the everyday language and underlying rhythm of my poetry in the introduction to the poetry, which I, in turn, used to report a little piece of history.

I make use of various poetry critics and writers, focusing however on poets of World War II, such as Bertholt Brecht and Nina Cassian, to name a couple, but also considering African and South American writers, such as Ben Okri and Carolyn Forche while analyzing my work in the critical introduction. These writers portray their struggle in the way that I attempt with my work. I incorporated critics, a few which are Philip Booth, Steven Matthews and Anthony Thwaite that share my opinion, or quote other critics that do, of the use of language, subject and sounds to form a poem. I found myself as a writer while writing and believe that at least with my poetry I accomplished what I had set out to do when I chose to write the collection of poems about the War in Croatia that follow the introduction.

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