Browsing by Subject "Poetry"

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A Fourteenth Way: Poems
(Texas Tech University, 2003-05) Knickerbocker, Carl Raymond
"So what is left when life is stripped / Of metaphysic terms" to write about? To be inspired by? When the ordering principles of nature and morality are viewed as subjective human projections, and when the landscape consists of suburb, production housing, what remains? Either a person says and writes nothing in the absence of inspiration, or one must take the initiative to transform the situation through language and attention until it becomes inspiring. When beauty is not an intrinsic quality but a human construct, the poet is free to determine beauty and artistic subject matter. At the same time, there is an opportunity to enter into dialogue with contemporary and historical poets to learn from and modify their existing works. Through listening to and adjusting a multitude of voices, one develops a distinct and individual voice and perspective.
After the lightning storm: A collection of original poetry
(Texas Tech University, 2008-05) Whitfill, Patrick N.; Wenthe, William; Poch, John; Kolosov-Wenthe, Jacqueline
After the Lightning Storm is a collection of poems whose subject matter ranges from a dust devil in a cotton field outside of Abernathy, Texas, to a series of vignettes about a relationship, its subtleties and eventual decline. Other poems speak either directly or obliquely to literary predecessors, writers such as John Milton, John Berryman and Michel Foucault. Poems that reflect on the self, on God, on the fear of death, appear next to poems about love-notes tucked inside of old books, and Christmas parades that march through the business district of a small town. In every instance, though, the poems in this manuscript address moments of disruptions, when the veneer shifts and after doing so, everything shines in a slightly different light. These differences capture emotional discoveries, the pathos of a situation, and rarely seek a summarized ending, but arrive instead at an extension of the original understanding. Formally, the manuscript is comprised of poems written in strict forms, such as triolets and sonnets, as well as a number of poems written in free verse. This combination allows the collection a flexibility of tone: from the rigidly structured to the open-ended. As such, the structuring of the manuscript echoes its underlying thematic concept of trying to control disruptions that occur in daily life.
Against against affect (again) : æffect in Kenneth Goldsmith's Seven American deaths and disasters
(2014-05) Boruszak, Jeffrey Kyle; Moore, Lisa L. (Lisa Lynne)
Recent scholarship on conceptual writing has turned to the role of affect in poetry. Critics such as Calvin Bedient claim that by using appropriated text and appealing to intellectual encounters with poetry based around a central “concept,” conceptual writing diminishes or even ignores affect. Bedient in particular is concerned with affect's relationship with political efficacy, a relationship I call “æffect.” I make the case that because of its use of appropriated material, we must examine the transformation from source text to poetic work when discussing affect in conceptual writing. Kenneth Goldsmith's Seven American Deaths and Disasters, which consists of transcriptions of audio recordings made during and immediately following major American tragedies, involves a specific kind of affective transformation: the cliché. I discuss what makes a cliché, especially in relation to affect, before turning to Sianne Ngai's Ugly Feelings and her concept of “stuplimity.” Stuplimity is an often ignored and not easily articulated affect that arises from boredom and repetition. Stuplimity is critical for Seven American Deaths and Disasters, especially for the “open feeling” that it produces in its wake. This uncanny feeling indicates a changing tide in conversations about conceptual writing. Rather than focus on the affect of æffect, we should instead turn to the effect.
Camping at the edge of the Yard: a collection of original poems
(Texas Tech University, 1996-05) Finch, Beverly H.
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Daphne in the twentieth century: the grotesque in modern poetry
(2009-05-15) Martin, Thomas Henry
This dissertation seeks to expose the importance of the grotesque in the poetry and writings of Trans-Atlantic poets of the early twentieth century, particularly Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot. Prior scholarship on the poets minimizes the effect of the grotesque in favor of the more objective elements found in such movements as Imagism. This text argues that these poets re-established the grotesque in their writing after World War I mainly through Hellenic myths, especially myths concerning the motif of the tree. The myths of Daphne and Apollo, Baucis and Philemon, and others use the tree motif as an example of complete metamorphosis into a new identity. This is an example of what Mikhail Bakhtin entitles grotesque realism, a type of grotesque not acknowledged in art since the French Revolution. Since the revolution, the grotesque involved an image trapped between two established forms of identity, or what Bakhtin refers to as the Romantic grotesque. This grotesque traps the image in stasis and does not provide a dynamic change of identity in the same way as grotesque realism. Therefore, these poets introduce the subversive act of change of identity in Western literature that had been absent for the most part for nearly a century. The modern poets pick up the use of the complete metamorphosis found in Hellenic myth in order to identify with a constantly changing urban environment that alienated its inhabitants. The modern city is a form of the grotesque in that it has transformed its environment from a natural state to a manmade state that is constantly in a state of transformation, itself. The modern poets use Hellenic myths and the tree motif to create an identity for themselves that would be as dynamic in transformation as the environment they inhabited.
Elizabeth Bishop and Brazil
(2014-08) Goudeau, Jessica Reese; Heinzelman, Kurt
Elizabeth Bishop's phenomenal rise in the academic canon is due in large part to the way her writings about Brazil correlate with current critical concerns. However, U.S. scholars have relied on an inchoate understanding of Bishop's sociohistorical contexts as she performed complicated and at times contradictory Brazil(s). Using Yi-Fu Tuan's methodology of space and place and James Clifford's dichotomy of routes/roots, I delineate between four discrete Brazil(s) in Bishop's texts. Shifts between these Brazil(s) are predicated on changes in Bishop's relationship with her Brazilian partner, Lota Macedo de Soares. I explore the eleven poems of the "Brazil" section of Questions of Travel and "Crusoe in England," as well as the introductions and translations she worked on contemporaneously. Bishop's tourist poems examine the tension between her expectations of the banana-ized Brazil of the popular Carmen Miranda movies, and the reality that she discovered as she moves from a tourist-voyeur to a rooted expatriate. In her Samambaia poems, she writes from the position of insider/partner about the subaltern public sphere that Lota has created at her farm outside of Rio de Janeiro. The volatility of the Brazilian political situation, which Bishop blamed for the dissolution of her relationship with Lota, led Bishop to define the primitive aspects of Brazil that Lota disdained. Finally, I argue that her translation strategies as she writes about Brazil after Lota's death in 1967 are a nostalgic return to her earliest views of Brazil.
Encoding embodiment : poetry as a Victorian science
(2015-08) Rosen, Stephanie Suzanne; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-; MacDuffie, Allen, 1975-; Moore, Lisa L; Baker, Samuel; Pinch, Adela
This dissertation is a study of poetry by major nineteenth-century British writers--Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Algernon Charles Swinburne--in the context of major nineteenth-century scientific questions. I analyze how these poets were intellectually connected to contemporary discussions of scientific epistemology, human sensation, and species evolution, respectively, and how their innovations in poetic form constituted one mode of investigating such phenomena. My close readings of major poems--Browning's "An Essay on Mind," Rossetti's "Goblin Market," and Swinburne's "Hermaphroditus"--draw from formalist methods that are attentive to historical forces, and cultural studies methods that are attentive to materiality, thus developing a practice of reading poetry as the product of experimental making. This approach is extended in the companion digital project to this study: an online edition of Rossetti's "Goblin Market" in which users may explore the poem’s irregular rhyme in an interactive interface. This study offers new methods and new texts to scholarship of the mutual influence of Victorian science and literature. It furthermore traces connections between the scientific theories in Victorian poetry and those in more recent critical theory, including especially feminist materialisms, affect theory, and transgender studies. Chapter One reads Browning's understudied 1826 epic poem "An Essay on Mind" to reframe her career-long engagement with debates on scientific method and her particular critiques of scientific materialism. Chapter Two argues that Rossetti's 1861 "Goblin Market" uses irregular rhyming patterns to study the ways in which the relative orientations of its characters may affect each other's experience, a topic of interest to her as a religious educator. Chapter Three argues that Swinburne's poetry plays with words as historically evolved forms capable of unpredictable change and that his sonnet sequence "Hermaphroditus" recognizes the body as capable of similar transformations. Chapter Four examines the potential for poetic form to inform the coding practices used to translate print poetry into digital editions, providing theoretical context for my interactive edition of "Goblin Market."
The evolved radical feminism of spoken word : Alix Olson, C.C. Carter, and Suheir Hammad
(2013-05) Rozman, Rachel Beth; Moore, Lisa L. (Lisa Lynne)
Radical feminism is often associated with the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. Although powerful in its goals of solidarity and coalitions, the movement is often criticized for its lack of attention to intersecting systems of power. However, several contemporary feminist spoken word poets are reconceptualizing radical feminism in their political projects, using the theories and activist strategies while paying attention to race, class, and sexuality. This piece traces some of the history and literature of radical feminism, Woman of Color feminism, contemporary Islamic feminism, and spoken word poetry. Using these frameworks, I close-read three poems: "Womyn Before" by Alix Olson, "The Herstory of My Hips" by C.C. Carter, and "99 cent lipstick" by Suheir Hammad to discuss the manner in which each uses coalitions. Olson's poem provides an analysis of the performative and textual aspects of the poem as a way to envision an activist project grounded in old social movements. Carter's poem connects history and archives, using a Woman of Color framework, and through Hammad, the structural critiques of an unjust system that disadvantages minority youth are seen through lenses of Women of Color and Islamic feminism. While these poets gain some knowledge from radical feminism, they interpret it in their poetry in ways that address the intersections of identity.
Farm Life
(2011-08) Balazic, Todd Daniel; Whitbread, Thomas B. (Thomas Bacon), 1931-; Cable, Thomas M.
Collection of poetry.
For the criminally insane
(Texas Tech University, 2004-05) Whitfill, Patrick N.
Not available
From the American Enlightenment : (cantata for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone and piano quintet on texts of Philip Freneau)
(2012-05) Harder, Lane, 1976-; Welcher, Dan; Sharlat, Yevgeniy; Grantham, Donald; Freeman, Robert; Webb, Lauren
From the American Enlightenment is a secular chamber cantata for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, and piano quintet, and it is based on the poetry of Philip Freneau. The overwhelming organizational principle of the music is the spiraling key relationships and their unfolding from sharp keys and their enharmonics (when the poetry deals with political radicalism) through to keys with more naturals in them (as the poetry begins to deal more with the cycle of life and naturalism), terminating on C major. Another localized organizational parameter concerns the specific musical motives (both motives of pitch and motives are rhythm) that are used in many guises throughout the work and that are used to construct themes, all with an eye toward unifying the musical materials over time and across movements. My analysis of the work deals with these two subjects as well as harmony and harmonic doubling, counterpoint, key centers within movements, and others as necessary. I will also discuss pre-existing works in various genres that influenced my piece. I begin the paper with background on the reasons for writing the piece, an outline of the American Enlightenment, and a brief discussion of the author of the texts, Philip Freneau.
Home away from home: poems
(Texas Tech University, 2004-12) Gray, Joellyn
Not available
"Hot little prophets": reading, mysticism, and Walt Whitman's disciples
(Texas A&M University, 2004-11-15) Marsden, Steven Jay
While scholarship on Walt Whitman has often dealt with "mysticism" as an important element of his writings and worldview, few critics have acknowledged the importance of Whitman's disciples in the development of the idea of secular comparative mysticism. While critics have often speculated about the religion Whitman attempted to inculcate, they have too often ignored the secularized spirituality that the poet's early readers developed in response to his poems. While critics have postulated that Whitman intended to revolutionize the consciousness of his readers, they have largely ignored the cases where this kind of response demonstrably occurred. "Hot Little Prophets" examines three of Walt Whitman's most enthusiastic early readers and disciples, Anne Gilchrist, Richard Maurice Bucke, and Edward Carpenter. This dissertation shows how these disciples responded to the unprecedented reader-engagement techniques employed in Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and how their readings of that book (and of Whitman himself) provided them with new models of identity, politics, and sexuality, new focuses of desire, and new ways in which to interpret their own lives and experiences. This historicized reader-response approach, informed by a contexualist understanding of mystical experience, provides an opportunity to study how meaning is created through the interaction of Whitman's poems and his readers' expectations, backgrounds, needs, and desires. It also shows how what has come to be called mystical experience occurs in a human context: how it is formed out of a complicated interaction of text and interpretation (sometimes misinterpretation), experience and desire, context and stimulus. The dissertation considers each disciple's education and upbringing, intellectual influences, habits of reading, and early religious attitudes as a foreground to the study of his or her initial reaction to Leaves of Grass. Separate chapters on the three figures investigate the crises of identity, vocation, faith, and sexuality that informed their reactions. Each chapter traces the development of the disciples' understanding of Whitman's poetry over a span of years, focusing especially on the complex role mystical experience played in their interpretation of Whitman and his works.
Jarīr and al-Farazdaq's Naqa'id performance as social commentary
(2012-12) Jorgensen, Cory Alan; Ali, Samer M.; Brustad, Kristen; Al-Batal, Mahmoud M; Azam, Hina; Arens, Katherine M
The pre-Islamic genre of poetry known as naqā’iḍ (flytings) was performed as a contest between two competing poets representing opposing tribes and served the important social function of determining tribal supremacy: the winning poet’s tribe was victorious and the contest itself sometimes replaced an actual battle. In the Umayyad era, however, tribal sedentarization coupled with the advent of Islam contributed to social changes as the landscape became more and more citied. The result was a realignment of traditional tribal relations that changed the context of naqā’iḍ poetry. Yet the genre survived. Scholars have dismissed Umayyad-era naqā’iḍ poetry as a form of entertainment with little purpose, but have failed to explain on what terms it persisted through the Umayyad era. This dissertation examines the effects of the cultural gradations that had been occurring from pre-Islamic times through the Umayyad era on the naqā’iḍ genre by examining the naqā’iḍ of Jarīr and al-Farazdaq. Their new discourse represented a departure from the traditional, agonistic naqā’iḍ of the pre-Islamic era. I compare the discourse of Jarīr and al-Farazdaq’s naqā’iḍ to other diverse lampoon genres, among them the “Dozens,” to illustrate literary theoretical issues they raise. I use Goffman’s concept of “team collusion” to illustrate how Jarīr and al-Farazdaq “colluded” to promote interest in their performances and maintain suspense for their audience. Using Bauman’s theory of “emergence” I show that Jarīr and al-Farazdaq performed the naqā’iḍ as comic entertainment for their audience, which allowed the poets to gain influence over them. The naqā’iḍ of Jarīr and al-Farazdaq represent a form of negotiating the turmoil of tribal relations via tribal competition and social satire in an increasingly urbanizing world.
Kissing the consolation: An original collection of poetry
(Texas Tech University, 2005-05) Foster, Trista; Poch, John; Wenthe, William
Kissing the Consolation is an original collection of poetry focusing on family and relationships written from a woman's perspective.
La afectividad como contra-discurso de la poesía comprometida de Daisy Zamora, Otto René Castillo y Roque Dalton
(2010-08) García Núñez de Cáceres, Jorge Federico; Arias, Arturo, 1950-; Shumway, Nicolas; Robbins, Jill; Salgado, César; Rodríguez, Ana Patricia
In this work, I explain that the focus of criticism on the Central American poetry of the second half of the twentieth century has emphasized its political content. I argue, however, that such a limited view obscures the broader import of this poetry and its place in Latin American literature. By reading the work of Nicaraguan Daisy Zamora, Guatemalan Otto René Castillo, and Salvadoran Roque Dalton with an emphasis on affectivity rather than revolution, I suggest a different relationship between the poet and society, one that is not limited to the marginal figure of the mujer soldado, the poeta guerrillero or the poeta marxista in conflict with all societal norms. Rather, I argue that my study portrays the complex subjectivity of the speaker/poet not unlike that of non-revolutionary poets, as well as his or her multi-dimensional affective connections to family and society. At the same time, an analysis of affect in this poetry allows us to reconsider the nature of the revolutionary figure itself, no longer a myth or a romantic hero, but an individual inserted in society in a more complex way. In Chapter 1, “Daisy Zamora: De la mujer-soldado a la mujer-mujer”, I contend that an analysis of affectivity of her poetic work reveals how personal memory constructs an individualized subjectivity different from that of a woman-soldier. In the second chapter, “Otto René Castillo: De la lucha revolucionaria a la soledad del poema,” I argue that a negative connotation of romantic love is projected in his poems bringing about traces of existential solitude in the lyric subjectivity. Furthermore, Castillo’s poetry elicits a binary opposition between “the people” and the guerrillero in which the former is portrayed as lacking of agency. The third chapter, “Roque Dalton: y/o subjetividad en crisis,” reveals the ways in which the Salvadoran poet textualizes a poetic of disenchantment by way of projecting disdain and contempt to the “motherland.” In conclusion, my approach pinpoints how Zamora, Castillo and Dalton share the same preoccupations, affects and ways to conceive reality, which are also similar to the practices of those poets whose works are better-known given their national origin or because their poetic production has been widely studied by academia. This document has been written in Spanish.
La Usina del Lenguaje: Teor?a de la Poes?a Neobarroca
(2013-08-08) De Cuba, Pablo A.
La usina del lenguaje: Teor?a de la poes?a neobarroca examines one of the most relevant poetry tendencies of the last thirty years: the Neo-baroque. In this dissertation I have endeavored to analyze the works of a number of Hispano-American poets, such as: Jos? Lezama Lima, Jos? Kozer, N?stor Perlongher, Eduardo Espina, Roger Santiv??ez, among others, in order to demonstrate that Neobaroque is a significant component of the cultural and aesthetic spirit of the contemporary Hispanic World. I also demonstrate and conclude that Neo-baroque appropriates the main discourses of Post modernity, while at the same time implying a critical revision of the poetic traditions to which it belongs, such as Baroque, Modernism, Vanguardism and Colloquialism. Additionally, this dissertation allows me to rethink the Spanish Baroque of the Golden Age looking for connections and ruptures between Baroque, Modernity and Neobaroque aesthetics. In order to establish a theoretical frame, on one level I adopt a structural approach along with a poetry analysis of the above-mentioned poets, and on another level, I explore the relationship between their works and other cultural endeavors, such as philosophical and theoretical thoughts, as well as appropriate political ideas.
The Lil' Bastard's guide to love : how to rub one out in your crush's bathroom and destroy the evidence
(2010-05) Shasteen, Stephanie Elaine; English; Kroll, Judith, 1943-; Young, Dean
The Lil’ Bastard’s Guide to Love is a compilation of poems I have written during two years of study in the creative writing program at the University of Texas. These poems mostly concern themselves with love. They also deal with the inadequacies of naming and language, and coming to terms with the fact that sometimes the best thing you can do is to not ruin everything with words. Words will disappoint you sometimes, but they are necessary, so at least try to be square with people if you absolutely must say something. As George Carlin put it, “You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms.”
The long line of the Middle English alliterative revival : rhythmically coherent, metrically strict, phonologically English
(2012-05) Psonak, Kevin Damien; Cable, Thomas, 1942-; Henkel, Jacqueline M.; Hinrichs, Lars; Lesser, Wayne; King, Robert D.
This study contributes to the search for metrical order in the 90,000 extant long lines of the late fourteenth-century Middle English Alliterative Revival. Using the 'Gawain'-poet's 'Patience' and 'Cleanness', it refutes nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars who mistook rhythmic liveliness for metrical disorganization and additionally corrects troubling missteps that scholars have taken over the last five years. 'Chapter One: Tame the "Gabble of Weaker Syllables"' rehearses the traditional, but mistaken view that long lines are barely patterned at all. It explains the widely-accepted methods for determining which syllables are metrically stressed and which are not: Give metrical stress to the syllables that in everyday Middle English were probably accented. 'Chapter Two: An Environment for Demotion in the B-Verse' introduces the relatively stringent metrical template of the b-verse as a foil for the different kind of meter at work in the a-verse. 'Chapter Three: Rhythmic Consistency in the Middle English Alliterative Long Line' examines the structure of the a-verse and considers the viability of verses with more than the normal two beats. An empirical investigation considers whether rhythmic consistency in the long line depends on three-beat a-verses. 'Chapter Four: Dynamic "Unmetre" and the Proscription against Three Sequential Iambs' posits an explanation for the unusual distributions of metrically unstressed syllables in the long line and finds that the 'Gawain'-poet's rhythms avoid the even alternation of beats and offbeats with uncanny precision. 'Chapter Five: Metrical Promotion, Linguistic Promotion, and False Extra-Long Dips' takes the rest of the dissertation as a foundation for explaining rhythmically puzzling a-verses. A-verses that seem to have excessively long sequences of offbeats and other a-verses that infringe on b-verse meter prove amenable to adjustment through metrical promotion. 'Conclusion: Metrical Regions in the Long Line' synthesizes the findings of the previous chapters in a survey of metrical tension in the long line. It additionally articulates the key theme of the dissertation: Contrary to traditional assumptions, Middle English alliterative long lines have variable, instead of consistent, numbers of beats and highly regulated, instead of liberally variable, arrangements of metrically unstressed syllables.
Lucretius, Pietas, and the Foedera Naturae
(2013-05) Takakjy, Laura Chason; Dean-Jones, Lesley
The presentation of pietas in Lucretius has often been overlooked since he dismisses all religious practice, but when we consider the poem’s overall theme of growth and decay, a definition for pietas emerges. For humans, pietas is the commitment to maintaining the foedera naturae, “nature’s treaties.” Humans display pietas by procreating and thereby promoting their own atomic movements into the future. In the “Hymn to Venus,” Lucretius uses animals as role models for this aspect of human behavior because they automatically reproduce come spring. In the “Attack on Love,” Lucretius criticizes romantic love because it fails to promote the foedera naturae of the family. Lucretius departs from Epicurus by expressing a concern for the family’s endurance into the future, or for however long natura will allow. It becomes clear that Lucretius sees humans as bound to their communities since they must live together to perpetuate the foedera naturae of the family.

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