Graduate Program

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2005

Thesis Director

Martin Scott

Thesis Committee Member

Robin Murray

Thesis Committee Member

Tim Engles

Abstract

A good poet to illustrate the distinction between modernism and postmodernism would be George Oppen (1908-1986). I believe Oppen's "objectivism" - coupled with a judicious use of deliberate ambiguity - nicely gets us past the postmodern insistence on the illusions of selfhood, reason, and order by insisting on the centrality of the perceiver/thinker amid the objective chaos of perceptions/ideas, while at the same time recognizing the multi-vocal construction of the perceiver/thinker. I believe the self may project its illusions onto reality, but not all reality (including the "self') is always thereby a false image. I have tried to fulfill Oppen's prophecy of a "post postmodern" poetry through examining and describing the singular by virtue of the plural and by using ambiguous poetic forms illustrative of our multi-vocal nature. Only by questioning our sense of "place" - and thereby ourselves as positioned in that "place" - can we begin to imagine new places and go there; following up on Jean Baudrillard's metaphor of the postmodern situation as the map taking precedence over the territory, I believe we need to make new maps with the old ones in mind. I believe my poetry fulfills this ideal.

Download

Share

COinS