| Homage to Voices: A Subjective Hearing of Voices on the Prairie (A Fantasy about Clarity in the Context of Madness) seeks to provide a polyphonic text, winch could be described as a long poem that is narrative, dramatic, and at times lyrical. It attempts to map a verbal universe through the eyes and ears of a protagonist endowed with a perplexing mental illness. The text locates the character's problems in his experiments, tentative and searching, with language. The work essentially explores the subjective state of that character, who provides a focus or fulcrum despite the scattered movements of his mind. My character uses language to understand and, to an extent, to control his own afflictions. His struggle leads him to ways of seeing conditions as vividly as possible, both within and outside himself. There is, then, a sub-text whose scope transcends the boundaries of the character, as he, fathoming himself in precarious relation to his surroundings, attempt to enter a larger group within which he can find some sense of self. Rather than extending himself into a dispersal from which he might not recover, he begins to construct himself as a multi-dimensional character. He sufficiently develops his confidence as a poet that he can reflect on his situation and render it within literary structures and methods. |
