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Publication Date

Summer 2015

Degree Type

Thesis - Campus Access Only

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English and Comparative Literature

Advisor

Alan Soldofsky

Keywords

imagism, Poetry, Post-Modernism, vers libre

Subject Areas

English literature; Fine arts

Abstract

Slippage employs a variety of poetic techniques and forms, oscillating at times between strict formalism and a more relaxed structure often approximating what the Modernist poets called vers libre. Major themes explored in Slippage include loss, ephemerality, memory (especially cognitive dissonance arising from discordant recollection), perception of reality, and the effect that circumstance has upon the human condition. Themes in Slippage converge and diverge within a structure divided into four parts—Apparition, Erasure, Fissile : Mod(urn), and Spiro—that symbolize an exploration into those realms of human experience that have been sacrificed for, or repressed by, modern convenience and automation. The aim of Slippage is to evoke a sense of longing in the reader such that their own individual experiences, wherever they fall within the larger spectrum of human experience, are overlaid onto, and carried by, the structure of Slippage, allowing the reader to embark upon the same symbolic exploration into humanity that the text does.

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