Fulminations

This dissertation begins with a critical introduction which examines a concept that the author has termed “causal exteriorization,” a phenomenon which occurs when ideas that matched thoughts one has only experienced privately are corroborated and validated when they are encountered in a poem (or story, film, song, etc.) These thoughts are then raised from the private to a conscious acknowledgement because of the encounter with the poem. The author distinguishes between poems that specifically seem to mine the unspoken interior psyche from poems that are pleasurable or meaningful because they frame a familiar idea within a new context, or they add a new perspective or angle to a familiar idea, or they say something familiar but in a fresh or an elegant way. These moments communicate shared unspoken, idiosyncratic thoughts, which are distinguished from confessional poems, which are also self-focused and achieve extraction of interior thoughts, because the ideas in confessional poems typically arise out of accessible experience, not necessarily the unconscious or unacknowledged. This critical examination is followed by a collection of poems divided into two sections. The first section is comprised of poems that were written over the course of this doctoral program and included in the author’s first published poetry collection, and the second section is a collection of poems that were written after the publication of the author’s first book.