The Empire of Mere Survival

Abstract

The poems in this collection revolve primarily around two subjects: the twenty-something speaker and his unlikely muse: a crippled Vietnam War veteran named Freddy, who struggles with deep-seated psychological problems. Though traces of formal elements exist as a sort of structural cohesion, the connection between these poems is largely a thematic and narrative one, weaving several threads together to reveal the relationship between these two figures, as well as their relationships with the people and places they choose to surround themselves with. Place is especially important in these poems, not only as a source of pride, but also as a sort of kinship--after all, at the core of this collection is an intersection of two lives in the same place at the same time, both of which seem to have stalled in some way. The tension born out of this aimlessness is what both drives and connects these poems.