Abstract

Unclosing Behind Me seeks to illuminate the spaces of dialogue between the lyric and aleatory modes of poetic writing. The collection hangs around the idea of the biographical as being of intrinsic value to both modes and constructs a loose historical sketch of a poetic subject that begins with events that precede its emergence and follow through to current times. Through the utilization of this biographical skeleton, the collection hopes to demonstrate the manner in which elements of both the lyric and aleatory methodologies overlap and inform one another, i.e., that the process by which a lyric acquires a historical narrative is not entirely dissimilar from the manner that the aleatory mode procures language from an external source text. The manuscript is composed of three movements that reflect this dialogue. The collection begins with a “traditional” long historical narrative poem, “Then the Letting Go: June 24th, 1972”, that broadly describes the drowning of a pair of men utilizing language and tropes familiar to lyric writing from the Pastoral and Romantic traditions onward. The manuscript's second section transitions gradually from this lyric mode toward the aleatory mode and is comprised of several short poems that hinge around the poem “Loosed Change”. The collection ends with “Letting Go, Shuffling On, May 2012” which seeks to recapitulate the narrative of “Then the Letting Go...” through language gleaned from song lyrics selected in an aleatory fashion via the shuffle function of an iPod. It is my hope that this comparative gesture allows for a productive explication of the oftentimes subterranean and unexplored dialogue that transpires between lyric and aleatory modes.