Digital Commons @ Colby

Title

What we bury: poems and epilogues

Author (Your Name)

James Harry Nicholas Martin, Colby College

Date of Award

1985

Document Type

Senior Scholars Paper (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. English Dept.

Advisor(s)

Robert Farnsworth

Second Advisor

Peter Harris

Abstract

The manuscript, What We Bury: Poems and Epilogue, consists of two major parts. The first is comprised of eighteen poems, selected from the thirty-two that I had written by the end of March. Included in the eighteen, in accordance with what I had stated to be one of my aims in undertaking this project, are three poems written out of inherited forms: two, "The October Wind," (p.22) and "Wandering By the Sea For the First Time," (p.23) are sonnets and one, "Brewster Station, "(p.10) is a sestina that in the final draft was broken. Also adhering to one of my original aims in the proposal, three poems are composed in an iambic meter: "The Song of Shadows," (p.18) "The October Wind" (p.22) and "A Letter Found Near the Ashes of Archangel." (p.25) The second part consists of the epilogue, a prose piece which is both a culmination and a synthesis of the prose work I had been writing throughout the year. In it, I attempt to articulate my own thoughts concerning three aspects of poetic construction: the advantages and disadvantages of a short line compared to a longer one; the use of meter to animate a poem; and how an inherited form such as a sestina or a sonnet can mold a poem's emotional content. Throughout my discussion of these three concerns, I use the work of other poets such as James Wright and Robert Frost, in addition to my own, to illustrate and illuminate the more abstract and general points made within the epilogue's text.

Keywords

Poems, Colby College

Comments

Audio file is a digitized recording from cassette tape.

Poetry reading, 3/18/1985. Introduction by Robert Farnsworth. Running time: 32 min.

Recommended Citation

Copyright

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