Date of Award

6-1-2012

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English/Creative Writing

First Advisor

Joyce Peseroff

Second Advisor

Lloyd Schwartz

Third Advisor

Jill McDonough

Abstract

Not So Fast is a collection of poems I've written during my three years in the MFA Creative Writing Poetry program. "Not So Fast" can be read two ways. First, it can be read as command implying that things are moving too fast for the speaker and he responds with a plea. It can also be read as a description of things that aren't moving too fast for comfort. Read this way, the speaker accepts the speed. I'm imagining this book as a push and pull between anxiety and submission. “Not So Fast” is a title of a poem in the collection. The poem ends with the image of a person spinning inside a revolving door because he can neither leave the door nor refuse to push. He is caught between concern for his safety and anxiety over what will happen to the people behind him if he falls. This image is emblematic of themes I'm trying to develop in the rest of the book. I have no delusions of this poem being a part of a positive comparison with W.B Yeats or Robert Pinsky, but I think of this image as acting in conversation with the “widening gyre” in “The Second Coming” and the “figured wheel” in Pinsky's eponymous poem. Their visions of history are either getting bigger or are gathering more and more as they spin. My vision of history is a little more self-contained. It's just a guy in a door. He isn't alone in the door, but his consideration of the others is limited from his compartment in the door.

Comments

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