Theses and Dissertations Collection

Abstract

These poems explore the dynamic between (mostly) written examples of formal structures and the content such structures hold. They suggest that content can sometimes break these formal constrictions, while still remaining an example of the form being broken. By following several formal strictures of specific linguistic artifacts—scrapbooks, prayers, journals, or traditional poetic forms, for example—these poems push at the boundaries of whether the strictures of such forms can ever fully contain all possible instances of the forms they are supposed to identify. Often, the forms these poems claim for themselves were not designed to contain the kinds of content these poems force them to contain. In this way, the poems express the poet’s struggle to trust things he wants to believe in, when the formal structures that establish his beliefs are repeatedly destabilized by his own moral, physical, and intellectual experiences.