thoughts from a poet's mind:

...as I begin my journey towards writing my dissertation...

 

 

                first pass my comprehensive exams.

                              twentieth-century poetry, theory,

                pilgrimage studies, Marianne Moore, Denise Levertov.

                bibliographies designed to express broad 

knowledge. books, upon books, upon books! 

 

more to say, more to know, more to write,  write,  write:

            fellow pilgrim, I implore you, be an active reader. 

            engage what's to come.

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Writing Excerpts:

Moore’s poem, “Critics and Connoisseurs,” exhibits the hallmarks  of her metaphorical poetry and provides an example of her intellectual labyrinth. In “Critics and Connoisseurs,” Moore relies heavily on the natural world in order to ground her readers in the philosophical one. On one hand, Moore uses the swan and the ant to present her audience with a meditation on the two types of readers a poet cultivates: the critics and the connoisseurs. On the other, Moore’s poem provides her readers with the space to contemplate what type of reader they are or want to become. All the while, because Moore ends her poem with questions rather than statements she once again becomes restrained within her own writing and thus allows for an intimacy to be cultivated between readers and poet.

 

"Spaces of Communion," 2013 

Current Projects:

Marianne Moore & Denise Levertov: Spaces of Pilgrimage. My dissertation discusses the above 20th Century American poets & how they create pilgrimage spaces within their poetic worlds.  

 

Graced in Sacred Ground: A Book of Hours: A poetry & painting project.  More info to follow...

Past Projects:

"The Pilgrimages within Pilgrimage: The Chartres Cathedral and its Labyrinth," Fall 2014.

 

 Moore: Spaces of Intimacy, Spring 2013.

 

“Spaces of Collision: Marianne Moore’s ‘The Fish’ and Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty,” Spring 2013.

 

“From the Abstract to the Concrete: Mapping a Way In and Out of Marianne Moore’s Poetry on Writing,” Spring 2012.