"the Hunt, The Flight"

Open Access
- Author:
- Sanders, Joshua James
- Area of Honors:
- English
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Robin G Becker, Thesis Supervisor
Lisa Ruth Sternlieb, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- poetry
nature
body
myth - Abstract:
- ABSTRACT Abrupt and heated, the alternation between rigid control and Dionysian emotional fracture defines the poetry I attempt to write. Establish a recognizable pattern, and then disrupt it. Speak with authority, but make the experience real by revealing, at a key juncture, the agitated, churning undercurrent of the psyche. Similarly, a poet’s musical skillfulness means more than his or her ability to establish a measure or to set vowels and consonants ringing against each other. Sometimes music comes from such patterning of sounds, but sometimes it comes from an intentional starkness. Music can derive, too, from the shifting of tones, from the pacing of associational leaps, or from the perfect timing of statements. Whatever its source, music always affects the more explicit meanings of a poem. The sounds of poems produce their own images, and have their own animal alertness. Reading a poem whose music is fully alive, you not only witness but feel the twists and turns of a consciousness in action. This close interplay between authorial intent and textual effect, as well as the ability to fine-tune diction, music, rhetoric, and image, constitute the focus of this thesis in poetry.