Sentence/Sentience An Exploration of Unbounded Linguistic Assemblage within Experimental Poetics
Date of Award
2007
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Humanities
First Advisor
Bartholomew-Ortega, Kristen
Keywords
Poetry, Experimental Poetry, Language Poetry, Ashbery, John, Heidegger
Area of Concentration
British and American Literature
Abstract
Experimental Poetry is a difficult type of poetics that is addling in its expansiveness and ambiguity. Enormous attention is paid to the materiality of the poetry--the way it inhabits the page, the spaces, the margins, the positions of letters--becomes subject to a pernicious poetic playground that shuffles our expectations of reading, perhaps to "reveal" something about language. Tan Lin, Susan Howe, and John Ashbery are, indeed, interested in language, particularly a poem's materiality, the words on the surface. Yet what they each manage to "reveal" transcends materiality, transcend objects and the concepts of objects. Their poetry reveals language's tenuous grasp on meaning, and meanings rather mercurial articulation within language.
Recommended Citation
Hawkins, Meghan, "Sentence/Sentience An Exploration of Unbounded Linguistic Assemblage within Experimental Poetics" (2007). Theses & ETDs. 3798.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/3798