PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2012, Arts and Sciences: English and Comparative Literature
This dissertation consists of two parts: a book-length collection of poems and a critical article. The poems have been sorted into five sections, each of which focuses on a particular theme, mood, or form found throughout the entire collection. Beginning with explorations of familiar experiences and ending in a search for spiritual transcendence, these poems attempt to discover what is mysterious about the ordinary and what is ordinary about the mysterious. The critical article explores how the social, cultural, economic, and political transformations that occurred within the United States after World War II made T. S. Eliot's concept of the historical sense newly relevant to poets like Richard Wilbur. Drawing on two studies of postwar poetry—Robert van Hallberg's American Poetry and Culture: 1945-1980 and Edward Brunner's Cold War Poetry—it closely examines selections from Wilbur's poetry and criticism to determine how he refashioned Eliot's idea for a broad American audience
Committee: Donald Bogen PhD (Committee Chair); John Drury MFA (Committee Member); Jay Twomey PhD (Committee Member)
Subjects: American Literature