Abstract

Taking its cues from the twentieth century life writing of Robin Blaser, Frank O’Hara, William Everson, Sylvia Plath and Alden Nowlan, The Lost Cafeteria is a stylistically shapeshifting bildungsroman-in-verse which examines and attempts to resolve the author’s parochially religious upbringing with his secular, peripatetic adulthood. Exploring the shape of the “I-within-history,” Ferguson mixes confessional lyric poetry with experimental détournements of texts from high and low culture to visit (and revisit) issues of labour, rebellion, family (biological and chosen), class, travel, memory (personal and historical), religion, place, and the meanings of the word “home.”