In The Hall of The Great North American Mammal

Abstract

"In The Hall of The Great North American Mammal" is a collection of poems in three parts that examines a speaker as he grapples with the concept of his own inevitable adulthood, finding, ultimately, that the depths of his heart linger in the romanticized promise of perceived adolescence. The dissonance he finds between the two stages of himself is treated as a real geography, a physical space where the forces of "other" and "self" wander and meet, where the unexpected or dangerous environment proves or tests the trajectory of this speaker's growth. Through the narrative of the extended poem in section two, this landscape becomes a way to flesh out the dissonance created by the speaker's maturing, while still attempting to recognize and celebrate the work that comes with forging or finding a path in an unfamiliar world.