Abstract

This thesis is a three part lyrical inquiry into the nature of language and desire. The first part, “Men in Various States,” is a text that leaps from voice to voice, place to place, genre to genre, mimicking the vivid, living, sporadic dance of desire. These multiple genres are to reflect the kaleidoscopic incarnations of Eros as it passes through different personalities and neuroses. The series is a chorus of men, all in various states of confusion about love. By generating many questions and answering none, a unity or conclusion is reached in that each man, though vastly disparate, is but a different face on the ten-thousand-sided-dice of the same drive.
Writing from a male perspective is a more pragmatic rather than political choice as it provides a cognitive distance needed to write about a familiar topic. More importantly I intend to show that desire manifests itself completely, often hideously, randomly, and regardless of gender, thus I both inflate and defy male stereotypes.
The second part of the thesis is an exercise in paradox: I use language to discuss the act of breaking free of language, breaking free of desire, since language is desire. The third section accepts that one may never be free of language but asserts that one may certainly make its borders and its meanings moveable. An experiment in hybridity and versatility of voice, these texts stutter around the slipperiness of language and the transience of desire.