ANNUALS: A Collection of Poems
ANNUALS: A Collection of Poems
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Date
1978
Authors
Mackey, John Joseph
Advisor
Van Egmond, Peter
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Abstract
The poems in this collection were written during the
past year and are arranged in roughly chronological order.
My intention in writing the poems was to construct
a truthful recreation of experience which would evoke
corresponding feeling. By selecting and ordering details
of ordinary occurrences, I hoped to create microcosmic
situations. The use of literary, mythological, and biblical
allusions aided me in this endeavor. These, like all poems,
should be read aloud, for the sound of words was a prime
consideration in their making. The beauty of poetry, I believe,
lies in the expression itself, the art born of ordinary
experience and chiseled by the tool of language. My attempt
was to create something pleasurable and universal from the
raw material of experience.
Having begun writing Shakespearean sonnets as a challenge,
I soon found that the strict meter and rhyme scheme were
excellent aids in producing a poem from a germinal idea.
Hence, more than a few that follow are in this mode.