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.

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