The Heart Can Thirst Because Obsession is a More Country: Poems and Lacemakers: Poems

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In the critical introduction, I consider Claudia Rankine's innovative Don't Let Me Be Lonely from a New Media studies framework. While subtitled an American Lyric, this book includes all manner of "non-lyric" material, such as visual image, the language of advertising, and political commentary. In collaging these various texts and modes of representation, Rankine draws attention to the representational media themselves and highlights the (often invisible) discourses that frame embodied experience. I argue that, through her nontraditional "lyric," Rankine situates the poem as a site of resistance to those discourses that would reduce selves to abstractions. She points to the fact that, while mediation is inescapable, authentic connection with the other is possible through recognizing the other as a particular, embodied self. Part two, The Heart Can Thirst Because Obsession is a More Country, is a collection of poems that deal with themes related to economy and consumerism. These poems are particularly aimed at exploring the current economic crisis (which is often reported through numbers and jargon) in terms of its human impact. The poems are stylistically diverse, and some of them engage in experimentation with form and voice. There are also, however, a number of poems in the collection, many of them elegies, that might be considered more traditionally "lyric." Lacemakers is a full-length poetry collection. It was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2012.