Asleep in the orchard grass.

Abstract

This thesis is a volume of poems introduced by a statement of personal and aesthetic concerns related to its composition. The introduction treats of both the political consciousness and the private self-awareness which influenced the creation of the individual poems. The primary aesthetic influence on the work is the deep image, surrealism being a lesser one. The volume itself is divided into three sections: "Before All Possibility," "Lightning Among the Living," and "One More Distance." The aesthetic influences mentioned above become increasingly operative section by section. A controlling voice pervades the volume. Through the work, this voice moves from self-involvement, through connection to others, and finally, in the last section, into contact with the unconscious. Of course, to divide the work so neatly is somewhat deceptive: influences from each of the sections penetrate all of them. The title of the work, as well as containing elements which resonate through a number of the poems, indicates contact, perhaps communion, with the intricate and various strands of thought, emotion, being, and experience which shape the self. This contact, as the idea of sleep suggests, is achieved largely through a bypassing of the conscious, analytical mind.