Date of Award
6-2000
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Daneen Wardrop
Second Advisor
Dr. Tom Bailey
Third Advisor
Dr. Nancy Eimers
Fourth Advisor
Dr. Sharon Bryan
Abstract
The poems in my manuscript can be divided into two groups: poems in verse and prose poems. The majority are prose poems. Though I did not set out to write in the prose poem form, I’ve become more and more attracted to it, eventually seeking what Baudelaire sought when he wrote the poems in Le Spleen de Paris, a poetic prose "musical without rhythm or rhyme, supple enough and shocking enough to adapt itself to lyrical movements of the soul, undulations of the reverie, sudden leaps of conscience." Charles Simic believes prose poems contain a tension between the lyric impulse and the narrative impulse. I’ve experienced this tension in writing the poems in this manuscript: the idea of telling a story through images (and leaving parts out) fascinates me. Often I bring together disparate images cut out of their contexts to overlap each other in poems; the images both tell and compress the story.
Access Setting
Dissertation-Open Access
Recommended Citation
McGookey, Kathleen, "Whatever Shines: Poems" (2000). Dissertations. 1469.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1469