Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2014, English

In the 1950's and 60's, a new era was marked in poetry; it no longer dealt with nature or love or even family, but with controversial social issues. A group of battered poets, who became frustrated with the constant crushing of people's individuality and freedom, decided to speak up. They called themselves The Beat Generation; they represented everything that is beautiful, truthful, and serene, which was revolutionary at the time. Allen Ginsberg was one of the founding fathers of this group of writers. His poetry mirrored the constant social and cultural oppression of the American people. This thesis discusses the contemporary American poet Allen Ginsberg and his views on life, society, cultural, and politically controversial issues. Allen Ginsberg's poetry speaks volumes about individual freedom and love.

Committee: Albino Carrillo (Advisor); Bryan Bardine (Committee Member); Andrew Slade (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2001, Arts and Sciences : English and Comparative Literature

CANNED ROSES, the title of this collection of poetry and short fiction, metaphorically captures the plastic, transient, comic absurdist quality of modern relationships. In Japan, and perhaps soon in the United States, canned roses are being sold, apparently for those romantic emergencies when there's no time for fresh flowers. These plastic (literally, not just figuratively) roses are packaged in containers much like those designed for canned potato chips. Since roses are the classic gift of lover to beloved, canned roses serve as an apt symbol capturing the ideas this dissertation expresses about love in the modern world. This is a book about relationships, particularly male-female, but also familial. Seeming polar opposites are being expressed: the futility of relationships in this fast-paced, superficial, increasingly mobile, alienated, technological world; and, at the other extreme, the all-encompassing beauty, transcendence, and magic of love, fleeting though it may be. Tied to the theme of relationships is the motif of the self, that is, an essentially egocentric search for the self, especially as the self copes with and comments on, in witty satirical fashion, life in an absurdist universe. The fiction especially (the poetry to a lesser degree) has its roots in an existentialist view of an absurdist universe, especially apparent in the relationships of the characters and the comic satiric voices of the narrators.

Committee: Terry Stokes (Advisor) Subjects:

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2003, Arts and Sciences : English and Comparative Literature

This dissertation contains three papers that address the definition of "confessional" poetry, most especially that which has been written by American women. The primary section of the dissertation is a manuscript of original poetry: thirty poems in all. These poems attempt to negotiate the boundaries between fact and fiction, truth and deception, often employing rhetorical strategies similar to those of the confessional poets of the 1960's.

Committee: Dr. Don Bogen (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, English

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, English

The broad questions the dissertation poses are 1) What is the poet's relationship with language? and 2) How do post-structuralist theories of linguistically constituted subjectivity affect how and what the poet writes? The examination applies this issue to a range of American poets working in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the new theories of how language and literature worked were being spread through the academy and the general culture alike. The dissertation's method first reads a poet's work from this period with a keen focus on what her poems both explicitly and implicitly say about language. Then, the work of a theorist, whose work is contemporaneous with the poet, explication in terms of its consequences for language and subjectivity. Finally, the two – poet and theorist – are engaged in a dialectic that exhibits how theories of language affect how and what a poet writes. The dissertation proposes four poetic relationships with language. Using the poetry of Adrienne Rich and the theory of Harold Bloom, anxiety is determined to be the initial way a poet relates to language. Subversive irony quells such anxiety, according to the poetry of John Ashbery and the deconstructionism of Paul de Man. Maurice Blanchot conceptualizes a space of literature which allows a poet like Jorie Graham to anguish herself out of existence. Alternatively, a Language poet like Barrett Watten so obsesses over language that he comes upon a relationship with language that is like psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's theory of subjective destitution in which one uses language but is divested of its meaningful influence of anxiety, irony, and anguish. The dissertation determines the inauguration of a new kind of poetry, one which merges poetry and theory. One of the results of the study finds that the new theoretical poetry suffers itself to understand language's effect on subjectivity and then clear away the saturation of language in order to construct a subjectivity that exists both insid (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Walter Davis (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, American

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2005, English (Arts and Sciences)

Small Bar is a collection of poems completed during Guthrie's graduate years at Ohio University. These poems, often written in a conversational style, take as their primary subject our daily interactions, whether between intimate friends or mere acquaintances, and consider the ways in which we respond to a world that is humorous, absurd, and often uncompromising.

Committee: Mark Halliday (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, English