Date of Award

4-2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts

First Advisor

Eleni Sikelianos

Keywords

Creative writing, Poetry

Abstract

This dissertation, Confidence, openly explores my relationship with the living world; since what I know ultimately finds a limit at the borders of my body, my relationship with the world outside of me is based on perception. The lyric poem, so often an expression of our innermost selves, is one practical embodiment of the paradox of being a person surrounded by other people and living in the world. For me, poems get articulated in the interest of empathy and sympathy, understanding and being understood, and I write them in spite of the fact of what often feels like an inherent and ongoing aloneness. Confidence evokes in me a proliferation of possible meanings. For one thing, I do not think of myself as a confident person, and I like the tension that might exist between that definition and the experience of being me. There are other confidences, though. There is the sense of confidence as a trick, as in a confidence game, and you might also think of confidences as whispers, secrets, lies, etc. Ultimately though, this is a poetic endeavor; it is an explication of the feeling of wanting to have a clear picture of what never quite existed, and it is along the traces of this feeling that this dissertation hopes to voyage.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. This work may only be accessed by members of the University of Denver community. The work is provided by permission of the author for individual research purposes only and may not be further copied or distributed. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Seth Landman

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

149 pgs

Discipline

Creative writing

Download



COinS