Project Director

Jackson, Richard, 1946-

Department Examiner

Barrow, Craig, 1943-; Sanderlin, Reed, 1937-; Helton, George B.

Department

Dept. of English

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Too often it is the habit of critics to create a realm of philosophy that removes itself from the very subject which it aims to clarify or refine. This paper attempts to avoid that mistake by grounding the philosophical ideas explicated in the first section of the paper in practical applications to the poetry of Mark Strand, A.R. Ammons and others. Briefly, the beginning sets up an idealogical framework that focuses on the poet's introspective search for the origins of his art. Drawing heavily on the criticism of Maurice Blanchot, the phenomonological philosophy of Martin Heidegger , and the philosophical poetry of Robert Haas, the first section explores that first experience of contact between the world and language that later gives rise to poetry. As this first (origin- al) experience is pursued, it becomes plain, as shown by Strand in his poem "The Untelling", that it is the pursuit of an ever-receding past which the poem cannot recover. A. R. Ammons, however, deals with this problem through the third section in a poem that focuses on the discovery of the new, rather than a re-evaluation of the past. It is this process of discovery, then, with which the paper ends, having explored various ways to apply the philosophical concepts dealt with in the beginning. Although there is a definite thesis (that there is a first non-verbal world from which the poet draws his poems), on the whole this paper proceeds inductively. That is, the theory is found in, and modified by, the particulars of verbal constructs and strategies of the authors' poems which necessarily reflect a shadow of a first ineffable apprehension of the world. Because of the utilization of this inductive method, there can be no strict first definition to which the paper confines itself, nor a final static assessment at the end.

Degree

B. A.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Date

3-1983

Subject

Poetry

Name

Strand, Mark, 1934-2014. Poems--Criticism and interpretation; Ammons, A. R., 1926-2001. Poems--Criticism and interpretation

Discipline

Literature in English, North America

Document Type

Theses

Extent

[iv], 64 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Call Number

LB2369.5 .F7 1983

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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