Date of Award

12-6-1996

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

First Advisor

Jay Meek

Abstract

"History Fluid and In Motion" is a collection of poems that derives its title from a poem in the first section. The collection reflects the view that "history," be it personal or societal, is created and recreated through memory, subjectivity, desire, and ego. History, and our perceptions of reality in the making of history, are fluid rather than fixed; hence, the reality of history is never still. Past, present and future all invent and redefine one another through our biased human eyes.Section One, "Sand and Stone," contains poems that focus primarily on past times and places, and examines how the imagination plays on them. The poems in Section Two, entitled "Planting Trees," focus on the ties we make with people and places in the present, how we see the future because of those ties, and how our memories of the past influence how we view these current relationships. Many of the poems in Section Three, "Bumps in the Wood," take as their material supernatural circumstances and reports of an afterlife.

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