Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of English
First Advisor
Primus St. John
Term of Graduation
Fall 2001
Date of Publication
10-30-2001
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.) in Writing
Department
English
Language
English
Subjects
Poetry
Physical Description
1 online resource (53 pages)
Abstract
The banal events of everyday life, when highlighted through the use of image and narrative, and combined with an active imagination, can be transformed into a literature that displays something miraculous. In some sense, this idea is related to the ideas of existentialism—the assertion that life is contingent or purposeless leads to the assertion that everyday life is an inexplicable miracle. It is also related to the assertion that a narrative is the only construct that can transmit meaning.
Cemetery of Discount Saints, as a collection of poetry, explores the relationship between the familiar world of contemporary Western civilization and the mysteries of the past: an idea based on the notion that history is a human construct and memory is questionable. It also explores the filters of perception, thought, and language that establish meaningful connections between the self and the external world.
Because poetry is impossible to quantify and, often, difficult to qualify, the only way to test its success or failure is to share the work with an audience of peers. Workshopping individual poems, reading the collections of noted poets of the past and present, and attempting to understand how their language functions within the context of their works, lead to the conclusion that poetry is not a simple matter of inspiration. It is a learned, practiced craft that cannot escape the roots of tradition.
Cemetery of Discount Saints is no exception. It required the feedback of other poets and writers, and many revisions to address their responses to each poem. It also relied heavily on the frameworks provided by the recent Imagist and narrative poets, as well as the Chinese Masters. From these traditions, each poem is an attempt to string images together within a story to produce an overlapping metaphor that reveals something miraculous and thoughtful about the world.
Rights
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Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/44996
Recommended Citation
Mueller, Paul, "Cemetery of Discount Saints" (2001). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 7165.