Date of Award
6-1-2015
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Organizational Unit
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences
First Advisor
Eleni Sikelianos, M.F.A.
Keywords
Poetry, Poetry anthology, American identity, Tyranno-lyrical poems
Abstract
This is a collection of tyranno-lyrical poems which force voice onto various absences and absurdities encountered in the project of constructing or deconstructing an American identity. The collection uses as a unifying conceit the personification of the four letters which have been replaced by the apostrophe in the abbreviation “NAT’L.” Iona appears as a speaking character in many of the poems, pulling an “I” character into conversation with her. Iona and I’s conversations rely on and mangle the poetic language commonly used to identify the nation and what does or doesn’t belong to it—especially the language of folk songs and political speeches. They create and try to escape an alternative American landscape, where seemingly contiguous states slip over, under, and out of scale with each other, like failed attempts to colonize tectonic plates. A critical introduction to the poems analyzes the contemporary American relationship between lyrical and political speech by developing a poetics of apostrophe and conspiracy through the words and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., Joshua Oppenheimer, Alice Notley, and Laurie Anderson.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Joe Lennon
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
File Format
application/pdf
Language
en
File Size
108 p.
Recommended Citation
Lennon, Joe, "Dinosaur Nat'l" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 362.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/362
Copyright date
2015
Discipline
Language