Avenue

Abstract

The following poems stem from an extended meditation on what it might mean to limit the agency and activity of the self. Throughout "Avenue," the self builds less than it is built, even when in the position of a creator. Alongside and imbricated with the content is a high level of interest in the formal capabilities of extended, complicated, and broken syntax. Form and content broadly change with the three sections of the thesis: Part One seeks to explore the possibilities of the personal lyric poem, Part Two maps the thesis' concerns onto a historical figure and a series of poems following a strict form, and Part Three attempts to broaden the personal concerns into social or historical levels through the figure of the city and that of the avenue.