The diminishing house

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The Diminishing House is a collection of poems in three sections. The first section begins with a series of childhood confrontations of mortality; the poems in the following two sections strive to transcend the ensuing grief through meditations on human anatomy, natural history, and ekphrasis. Many of the poems are informed by the still life, either literally or figuratively. Additionally, many of these poems bear the influence of other writers who seek metaphysical meaning through intense contact with the material world, such as Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Amy Clampitt, and Mark Doty.