Abstract

This work takes, as its overall trajectory, a leap from the heights of "factual" and "authentic" historical writing to the sea of fiction and myth. The first of the long poems, Ropewalk , is a sham biography of the French renaissance poet Louise Labé. To emphasize that much existing biography of Labé arises from interpretation of her lyrical poetry, the work incorporates lines of her sonnets, badly translated so that certain of the French words remain. Just as such translation does not seek to produce an apparition of the original, the poem does not seek to represent Louise Labé's life, but rather that of an unidentified lyrical 'I' belonging to both past and present. The second long poem, Ninth Month , is autobiographical, written from the interior of the final month of pregnancy. It acts as an introduction to the third long poem, Mountance of a Dream , also autobiographical. The spaces here are feminine and interior as well, but the writing self is undone, due to the birth of her daughter; her past is reassessed and in this reassessment changes. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)