Date of Award

Spring 1986

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Program/Concentration

English

Committee Director

Bruce Weigl

Committee Member

Philip Raisor

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E64A76

Abstract

Writing is an act of survival for the person who must live an examined life. The process of writing is surrounded with such private ritual as laying claim to a quiet niche in the house that will become one's place for writing, and with reading from sources deeply significant to the writer before beginning with one's own writing. Only then is the writer ready to look out at the world from his or her study window, or as Flaubert preferred, from the landscape of a wall to create a new landscape.

The landscape of most of my poems in this book is created out of the memory of childhood, as well as images of being a mother, a wife, and images of myself as separate woman. More difficult to assess, but also present, is my belief in the power of words to heal and justify, to cure and explain the world and our place in it. We are situated halfway between the matter of this world and our own particular consciousness, and in my poems, I work to reconcile factors outside and within while both change in time, just as, paradoxically, they remain the same. We repeat memories and experiences as we grow older, seeking to come to terms with loss: loss of a friend from our youth, loss of a mother, loss of our children to the world and of ourselves to time.

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DOI

10.25777/brj9-hw52

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