| "Olson's Dance: The Poetics of Place in American Poetry," uses Charles Olson and his poetic theories as a foundation to study the relationship between geography and poetic from in American Poetry. The dissertation traces a lineage of poetic development, from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick through Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams to Charles Olson, in which the concept of space becomes an analog for poetic structure. In doing so, this study attempts to connect the post-modernism of Olson directly to an "American" experience. The work includes the chapters on Moby-Dick, Leaves of Grass, Paterson, and Maximus Poems. By using Olson's proposition to take "SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America," this study asserts that inn each case, space--American geography--becomes an analog for the form and poetic voice each writer employs. |
