Poetry Commons^™

La « Langue Fantôme » : Une Présence Familière Dans L’Écriture – Présentation Du Poète Malek Alloula Suivie D’Un Entretien, Yamna Abdelkader-Chaldi.

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The evolution of Malek Alloula’s works, an important poet of Algerian literature whose first works date back to the sixties, is analyzed by Yamna Abdelkader. Afterwards, she interviews him on his poetic work and its relationship to language. The poet thus explains his writing ; how he composes his poetry in relation to the creative process ; his technique ; the influence of its cultural origins, and its relationship to language. In using the term “phantom language”, the poet refers to the haunting presence of the Arabic language spoken in Algeria, which, while unseen, has a major influence on his …

La Transmission De La Parole : D’Une Langue À L’Autre, Gabriel Mwènè Okoundji

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

I consider myself as a poet of oral tradition, using a pen. Somebody who passes on words I received from my ancestors, speakers of the essentials, masters of words, who could not write but who knew the basics: words and proverbs which give birth to the light necessary to progression. So my quest is turned towards a poetry of initiation and passing on whose only purpose is to teach men to trust on their fragility. So I created my mother tongue in a midway zone between Tégué, my parental tongue and French, my written language. Both languages are flowing inside …

The Lemon Tree: My Tree Of Life, Meghan E. Mccarthy

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The Lemon Tree is a collection of poems that arose from my attempt to capture memories of influential experiences in growing up. The poems are written in prose blocks and move in and out of childlike and adult sensibilities, creating the disillusion of time and memory. The poems themselves are comments on the unreliability and limited scope of memory and compare remembrance to dreams. This suggests that time moves more fluidly than the waking world accepts. Through looking back, through prisms, the speaker remembers experiences that impacted her development as we follow her on a journey to coming-of-age. The Lemon …

Memoric Form: Poem As Memory, Lawrence V. Eby

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Machinist in the Snow is a narrative long poem, much like a novel in verse that deals with the loss of memory and environmental rebirth. In the book, the narrator exiles himself into a frozen nature and attempts to return the frozen wasteland into its former, flourishing environment. The poems take on the memoric form of memory in a wide range of poetic forms from the traditional sonnet, haiku, or villanelle, to a scattered projective verse. In the center of these poems is an attempt to mimic the mind in the way that it shifts, in its moments of clarity, …

Confessions Of A Hip-Hop Hippie, Tristan D. Acker

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This Statement of Purpose does not give a history of hip-hop or hip-hop poetry but rather how this particular poet fits into the current phase of hip-hop and performance poetry. In it, I discuss and explain the new pro-working class hip-hop performance poetic. This includes extensive discussion of how rap poetry conveys meaning through sound. Also discussed is the socioeconomic context for the suburban southwestern topics found in the manuscript. This statement is a parallel piece to the manuscript itself in that it explains a brown kid from San Bernardino’s journey of connecting words and music for purposes of personal …

Americhicano, Isaac R. Escalera

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The title of my manuscript, Americhicano¸ is a play on the words American,Americana, and Chicano. It was my goal to write poems that would capture the shared experiences of Chicanos, Latin Americans and the vast people group we identify as “American.”

In the first part of my Statement of Purpose, I go into the politics and social commentary of why I chose this as the focus of my project. “Why I Write” is a continuation of that conversation, but more focused on my own personal experience and journey as a writer. In the Section titled, “On Narrative Poetry” I explore …

Reassurance In Negative Space, Elizabyth A. Hiscox

Dissertations

This dissertation, Reassurance in Negative Space, is a poetry manuscript that deals with intersections of grief, gender, environment, and art in contemporary society. One of its guiding properties is an interest in the ekphrastic mode of composition: poetry in response to a work of visual art. American Hybrid poet-editor Cole Swensen discusses what has emerged as a new “hybrid” poetry that combines conventional approaches with more experimental forms; a stable first person narrator with fragmentation or juxtaposition, for example: “Hybrid poems often honor the avant-garde mandate to renew the forms and expand the boundaries of poetry—thereby increasing the expressive …

Volume 10, Issue 2: Full Issue

Manuscripts

Full issue of the March 2014 issue of Manuscripts. Includes work by: Lucy Kaufman, Thomas J. Luck, Mary M. Schortemeier, Verse Forms Class, Jeanne Gass, Jack DeVine, Mildred Reimer, Donald Rider, Donald Morgan, Joe Howitt, Elizabeth Hyatt, Arline Hyde, Stuart Palmer, George Zainey, Peggy O'Donnell, Lester Hunt, Arthur Graham, Rosemary Haviland, Fayetta Hall, and Jane Burrin.

In Pursuit Of Distant Horizons, Whitney Polich

Graduate School of Art Theses

Our lasting human desire to rationalize the phenomena of nature manifests as ceaseless attempts to fix fluid landscapes within the rigid boundaries of an image. Each landscape with its own physical language, rooted in the temporal and subjective particularities of sense—taste, touch, smell, sound, and sight—requires a lived immersion to be read and as such, eludes static interpretation or expression. The physical horizon provides both a physical and metaphorical reminder of the limits we constantly find ourselves confronted with—those limits of perception, language, and knowledge—as we seek to expresses the immediate experience and profound vastness of a world far exceeding …

Making It Harder Than It Has To Be Or This Is The Sculpture Or *Sigh, Todd Barry

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

You will be punched in the face and then poked in the side

(it seems, someone, has something, to say)

You start off with a slow looking-back – making a steady assumption

You take that assumption, o p e n it up ~ into elaboration, and sing the thing

RIGHT ON out of itself

You sculpt

You step back

You say, ‘wait a minute – relax’

You wake up, wiggle toes, wait for [something], move, make~ into

[something], and stand by it

You laugh, get grounded, fight your way outside, come

back, and take care of things

You feel, in …

The Hat Lady Equation, Lauren Capone

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Hat Lady Equation is a collection of poems by Lauren Capone. As influences she cites Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, among the exquisite minutiae of day-to-day living. The poems explore works of visual art by Alberto Giacometti, James Taylor Bonds, Chris Dennis, Blaine Capone (her brother), and creatures of the natural world including fish, the rhinoceros, a lettered olive shell. . . . Lauren shows a preoccupation with disassembling through the poems whether it's her identity, art, or happenings of everyday life.

Burning The Cherry Trees, Amelia Sorensen

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This work is a collection of forty-five (45) poems written and edited throughout the author's time at Binghamton University. Combining strong images with experiments in form, Burning the Cherry Trees is a multi-faceted collection about achieving renewal through the loss and destruction inherent to change.

Excerpts

Manuscripts

Excerpts from additional submissions by authors: Betty Lewis, Joseph C. Greenlee, Suzanne Weesner, Katherine Armstrong, and J. Wm. Lynn.

A Nightmare, Jane Burrin

Manuscripts

The lake was unusually calm that particular June day, when my Mother and Father started on their daily fishing trip.

I bade them farewell from the dock, and reluctantly started back to the cottage. Although I did not have the patience for fishing, it seemed that there should be something more exciting to look forward to than a game of solitaire.

Resigning myself to this entertainment, I settled down on the screened porch with my cards and the radio. I played the necessary unsuccessful game, and my luck began to change. I triumphantly placed the last ace on the stack …

The Butler University Library, Fayetta Hall

Manuscripts

There are many features about our school which I admire, and there are surely some features which I have not yet learned to appreciate fully. One prominent feature which falls into both of these classes is the university library. My realization of its worth has increased with my growing knowledge of the library's history and development.

When our college was known as the Northwestern Christian University, it was located on College Avenue. As far as is known, no real library was then existant. However, as far back as 1873, a small room in the building was set aside and two …

Ode To A Jukebox, Rosemary Haviland

Manuscripts

Oh fat gleaming monster reposing in the corner
With your soul glowing like satan's fires,
Whence have you come to destroy life's peaceful existence;
To tempt youth and put new lines in the seers' brows?

Like the roaring blasting furnace, you require nourishment,
Taking pity on your pangs of hunger, I'll feed you a nickle,
Ungrateful one! There you sit with your polished sides gleaming,
Smug and satisfied like a fat Buddha.

Slowly you devour my offering,
And as it reaches your digestive system,
You gr--rr-owl and gr--rr-Ind;
Instead of a soft crooning thanks, you stab at me with a …

Frustrated Genius, Arthur Graham

Manuscripts

He sits down at the desk, tears a sheet of paper out of a tablet, picks up a pencil, and commences. After commencing for some twenty minutes he decides that he should un-commence long enough to decide upon a subject upon which he can commence, Another twenty minutes pass during which he systemazically breaks the lead of his pencil, sharpens his pencil, turns the radio on, turns the radio off, takes his shoes off, puts his shoes on, musses up his hair, combs his hair, loosens his necktie, takes his necktie off, takes off his glasses, twirls his glasses around …

Our Christmas Tree, Lester Hunt

Manuscripts

We, like many other families, have our own special customs. We have our holiday customs, our dinner customs, our own way of making beds, and our own brand of humour. There is one holiday custom, however, that I especially treasure because I had a share in its initiation. It is the custom of getting our own Christmas tree.

As I remember this first experience, it took place about a week before Christmas, but we still hadn't found a Christmas tree that we liked. It was then that we "menfolks" decided to get our own tree. I was eight years old …

Oh, Pudgy!, Peggy O'Donnell

Manuscripts

Well, Pudgy, here we are on top of Maple Ridge. Isn't this the most splendiferous day? I can just lie here basking in the sun (as the Florida travel folders say), and you can sniff around and explore everything to your canine heart's content.

Yes, a spring day up here is wonderful, but I guess it will always be fall on the Ridge for me. Fall, with the maples all gold and red, and the sky all blue, you and me and .. .. and Bill.

'Member Bill, Pudgy? You used to love it when he rubbed your ears. He …

Shortages And Priorities, George Zainey

Manuscripts

The day is soon to come when the shortage of men will become so acute that our feminine sex is going to have to have a priority rating to get a date. This of course will be a great blow to our beautiful, energetic, and studious co-eds when they will have to tear a little coupon from their book, push it in the face of a "soon to be rare" man, and yell with anxiety and a gleam in their eyes, "You're mine tonight --oh boy!" It will be an equally tragic situation if the precious men should choose to …

An Era Was Past, Stuart Palmer

Manuscripts

There sat the old station, all boarded up, and looking very much like a thing of the past. It had changed a lot in five years. It had changed from a place of activity, of hasty farewells and hearty receptions, to a dingy old building that nobody noticed now. Someday soon someone would come along and tear it down for the wood in it, and thus would end one of the most significant and colorful epics that the little town of Richfield Springs had ever witnessed.

Slowly I walked up the old brick path that led to the ancient structure, …

A Dime Novel, Arline Hyde

Manuscripts

Spying a red cover on a magazine at a newstand, a customer may pick it up and upon casual examination notice. the title LOVE blare in large print across the page. "A ten-story issue" the cover reads, with two featured articles entitled "Revenge Honeymoon" and "Hotel-Lobby Flirt." A blond cover-girI peers over her almost bare shoulder. "Hmm, looks interesting," thinks the customer and so another typical pulp magazine is sold for the small sum of one dime.

My Favorite Spot, Elizabeth Hyatt

Manuscripts

About an hour and a half from nowhere in a. western woodland, a tiny cabin nestles among the trees. Nearby, a small brook runs clear and cold, babbling softly over the stones. Flowers flaunt their colors in a gay parade around the cabin.

Inside, the odor of clean, bare pine is strong and refreshing. The furniture is simple and sturdy. Its unpainted finish matches the walls and floor perfectly. In one corner, a double-decked bunk bed stands invitingly. The stone-hewn fireplace at the far side of the one room cabin leads a double life; it warms the occupants and cooks …

The Scrawl Of An American, Joe Howitt

Manuscripts

An American is the sum of all the contributions, both good and bad, of all the peoples on earth. Our country was founded to satisfy the desires and to develop the interests of everyone, be he Jew or Gentile, white or yellow. At first America was settled by people who had been religiously persecuted, and then later by those who sought economic gain in the land of "golden opportunity."

The American, from the time of the writing of the constitution up until the present day, has valued more than anything ~is right to worship as he pleases, to enter into …

Upon Entering My Seventeenth Year, Donald Morgan

Manuscripts

The past summer was, by all of the usual standards, uneventful. It was the first summer I can remember that did not include an automobile trip to the East, West, or to the beloved "north country." Instead, I attended summer school for six weeks, then suffered the worst month of absolute idleness that I have ever experienced. Although disappointing in its monotony, the vacation was not entirely without advantages. In my school course, I was introduced to a subject which interests me intensely, economics. Although totally different from the sciences I had studied previously, it fully satisfied my craving for …

Winter Evening, Donald Rider

Manuscripts

As the year evolves, nature contemplates, nature broods, nature rants, and nature breathes the warm glow of spring. She may brood the noisy thunderstorm of summer, rant the early autumn squalls, and whisper with zephyrs the heralding of spring, but tonight she contemplates. Tonight she contemplates and her utter silence pervades the hunter's cabin.

Rubber And The War, Mildred Reimer

Manuscripts

We walk on it, ride on it, wear it, and use it in our pastimes. We make use of it for comfort and safety. We see it everywhere. Much of it that is used is hidden from us under silk, cotton, or steel. This popular product can be made to stretch ten times its length or treated so that it will not stretch at all. It can be spun so fine that it resembles a spider's web or made so lasting that it will outwear steel. It can be made to withstand hot or cold temperatures, to absorb water or …

Sonnet, Lucy Kaufman

Manuscripts

Now let the sweeping clouds of spring be gone
forever from these wild perfidious skies,
and let no more a laughing sun mask dawn
with psuedo-joy to veil its mocking lies.
No more the solitude of swinging space
stretching through the unrecorded hours,
marks alone time's lofty ponderous pace
across this heaven and above these towers.

Now you will see a servile sky defer
at dusk before a dark-winged enemy,
and you will hear the low portentous purr
of planes announcing death decorously.
No more can nights which swept the heavens clean
of war, within these shell-shocked skies be seen.

Conversion, Jack Devine

Manuscripts

Mary Anna opened the door and saw her man. Her man was a hobo, looking for a bite to eat and possibly a pie which had been set on some ledge to cool.

Rambling Joe looked at the little girl and in his most polite manner, doffed his hat and said, "Little girl, I wonder if you would ask your ma if she could spare a man a bite to eat."

"My mother isn't here," Mary Anna replied, and puffing up with importance said, "if you will come in; maybe I can find something."

Mary Anna had just come bark …

Evolution, Jeanne Gass

Manuscripts

Lora Tiptoed across the bedroom stepping gingerly from one rug to another, avoiding the chilling touch of the hardwood floor. She fumbled in the closet and finally slipped her cold feet into sensible blue leather house-slippers. The heels clicked softly on the hall floor. She raised the window shade in the bathroom, and the half-light of the early morning added cheerless rays to the cold room. Lora gasped at the shock of cold water on her face, and her hands shook as she drew curlpins from her hair. She combed her hair hurriedly, and its electricity bristled about her shoulders …