Date of Award

5-3-1985

Document Type

Thesis

Department

English

Abstract

Poetry is spontaneous utterance. When a poet is presenting his/her poems, it is a movement that lives in its own existence; likewise, a poem lives as itself.

To constantly become his/her self, the poet seeks limits, surpasses them, then discovers and surpasses yet newer ones, much like storming the gates of hell to reveal that evil exists in the mind. Poetry is a means of realizing, then transcending, the personal self; it demands of the poet a commitment to live with the utmost passion inherent in his/her self to live life deeply, directly, and dare to feel, to dance and celebrate the passing moment for all it is worth, to laugh the wild, free laugh of humanity. As a poet, I realize that my primary function is to move the individual to enable his/her self to identify with another's life, or vision, to make its own what it is not and yet is capable of being. From outside the pale, I attempt to provoke people to look outside of themselves, to deliver them from the limited ways in which they see and feel, so that they may glimpse a divine sensibility latent in their unconscious mind, a sensibility which must be rendered attainable through words. Poetry, then, is somewhat of an incantation to another, freer, purer realm: a dimension of sometimes painful awareness open to all who refuse to live life on the surface alone. While a 553892 ii poet--along with painting, dance, theatre, film, poetry~is a process him/herself, the permanent function of art is, for me, to recreate as every individual's experience the fullness of humanity at large: the collective, ultimately the divine. If this process is to transform my poetry to associations beyond its themes, each poem must build to a realization of mood rather than a sequence of events; thus, the thought that has gone into the poems is primarily pictorial and not explanatory, impressionist and not analytic.

This thesis is a fragment of process; with the poems that follow, I am saying, as a poet, this is where I am now. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Yet it is a chapter now closed, and it is every bit as important by itself as it will be for the chapters, down the road, to follow.

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