| The poetry and fiction that make up this thesis are the result of many years of experimentation with the sound, sense, and texture of language, a creative process through which I have developed a stylistic stance that is informed by an American tradition of experimental poetry as well as some of the major currents of postmodernist thought. I see this work as participating in a historical arc of experimental poetry that includes the Surrealists, the Dadaists, the Modernists, and most recently, the Language poets of the 1970s and 80s. My aesthetic approach bears the strongest connection to these more contemporary writers, particularly in its preoccupation with exploring the boundaries of language set loose from syntax and rigid signification, its attempts to problematize the authorial subject and refocus meaning to the language itself, and its consequent shifting of the weight of interpretation to the reader. This approach owes the greatest debt to the works of three poets in particular: Clark Coolidge, Lyn Hejinian, and Ron Silliman. Their experiments in nontraditional poetic formations have been influential in the construction of my own, and I feel that the poetry displayed here furthers their attempts to move American poetry beyond the bounds of narrative and lyricism. |
