Candidate: Julie Stotz-Ghosh

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: English

Title: Figure Drawing: A Poetry Collection

Committee:
Dr. Nancy Eimers, Chair
Dr. William Olsen
Dr. Christopher Nagle
Dr. Cat Crotchett

Date: Friday, May 24, 2002 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
3011 Brown Hall

Abstract:
Figure Drawing is a collection of approximately 65 pages of poetry with an introduction that outlines my personal perceptions of the stylistic and thematic elements in my poetry. While the forms are varied, the manuscript is arranged around prominent thematic strands, the most dominant of which is perception--the tension between what is perceived and what is real, certainty and uncertainty, conscious and subconscious. I want to convey that perception is important but fragile because loss and change are inevitable. In addition, perception becomes problematic because we have to factor the perceptions of those with whom we interact into our own view of reality, which often leaves us feeling confused about what is real and what is unreal. In spite of these tensions, there is a sense of longing in the poems for something stable: grass and other natural objects promise "permanence;" some poems struggle to construct logical formulas with surreal variables that equal truth or "always." Subjects of my poems are my family; friends; dreams; and natural environments such as the fields, ponds, and woods in Ortonville, MI., and water, lakes, and beaches, especially the Great Lakes. The natural world is a place for reflection, but does not provide security as it does in Romantic lyrics. Science, particularly biology and physics, enter my poems by way of discussion or in the detailed and logical scientific method in which things are observed. Observation is often undercut or interrupted by scientific knowledge or questions, such as in the line "Shape is the illusion that distracts me/ from the thought that I could unwrap his body,/ line him up molecule by molecule, on paper." In my poems, science and the subconscious are factors that further complicate the ability to perceive anything real or stable.

Related Topics

Main List of Archives:
Dissertation Defenses

Current Dissertation Defenses