Date of Award
5-10-2014
Document Type
Open Access Thesis
Department
English Language and Literatures
Sub-Department
Creative Writing
First Advisor
Samuel Amadon
Abstract
Volumes is a book-length work of poetry in three parts. Volumes investigates the process of art, wherein the creative act constructs both the created object and its creator the artist. I use the term "creation" rather loosely: I propose such an act to be present within one's self-recognition, imaginative contextualization of oneself within a setting, or performance of a role. Volumes, through Ars Poeticas, struggles with ideas of self-awareness, wherein the artist achieves a unique determinacy before and after a creative act because the artist is necessarily changed by the act of creation. The project struggles against the opaqueness of inspiration--since the act of creation re-creates the artist in some way, the process of creating art is incomprehensible or at least obscured. The poems from Volumes feature characters that represent general classes of people: man, boy, she, guard, and playwright, to name a few. Each creates in his or her unique medium, from pen-and-ink drawings to cooking and from naming to imagining, while self-consciously aware of the act of creation and its effects on their ever-changing being. In a process each artist does not understand, the creation provides new understanding; from new understanding, the self is recognized anew. The project considers also how the single medium of poetry can represent these creative acts in other distinct mediums.
Recommended Citation
Stark, M. B.(2014). Volumes. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2707