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Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Jennifer S. Kanke June 2009 © 2009 Jennifer S. Kanke. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion by JENNIFER S. KANKE has been approved for the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by Jill A. Rosser Associate Professor of English Benjamin M. Ogles Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT Kanke, Jennifer S., M.A., June 2009, English, Creative Writing Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion (67 pp.) Director of Thesis: Jill A. Rosser As a collection of poetry, Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion begins to examine the joys and challenges of monogamous partnership in the 21st century. The introduction discusses the work of Kim Addonizio, Lucia Perillo, and Jane Kenyon as established poets writing about romantic relationships. The poems in Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion seek to navigate a space within confessional poetry between the anger and edginess of Addonizio and the placidity of Kenyon while simultaneously avoiding the ennui of Perillo. The poems seek to communicate the passion that can be found in the quiet quotidian. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Jill A. Rosser Associate Professor of English 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An infinite number of stacks of wood from Ikea can never express my gratefulness to my husband Tim for his support in this project and for his willingness to allow immeasurable personal details to be shared with total strangers. My gratitude is also owed to Jennifer Colatosti and Echo Railton for letting me breathe in their awesomeness and to Ashley Good and Carling Futvoye for helping me learn to run, both physically and metaphorically. Thanks to David E. Wanczyk for letting me beat him at Trivial Pursuit once in awhile, even when I insist that William of Orange and William the Conqueror are the same person. I'd also like to acknowledge the never ending strength, listening ears, and decaf coffees given to me by Lydia McDermott and Megan Villegas. Finally, for their creative input and support, I would like to thank Jill Rosser, Mark Halliday, and Janis Butler Holm. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 4 Introduction: Confessionalism and the DesirabIlity of the Quotidian ................................ 7 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... 23 Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion ...................................................................... 24 I want to be good .......................................................................................................... 25 The Smell of Curve for Women .................................................................................... 26 Origami of the Seventh-Grade Girl .............................................................................. 27 Love in the Days of Grunge .......................................................................................... 28 Breathing Room ............................................................................................................ 31 Crash Course in the Philosophy of Passion .................................................................. 32 The Smell of Curve for Men ......................................................................................... 33 Swinging Door .............................................................................................................. 34 I May Have Unrealistic Expectations ........................................................................... 36 Why I Wish For 800 Chickens ..................................................................................... 37 Lines Composed While My Mother-In-Law ................................................................ 39 Remains in ICU with Pneumonia ................................................................................. 39 Funerals in Winter ........................................................................................................ 41 Rt. 13, Mid-March ........................................................................................................ 42 This Will Not Be My Last Midwestern Winter ............................................................ 43 Vacation of the Tomboys ............................................................................................. 44 6 Advertisement for Fall .................................................................................................. 45 The Old Woman Who Did Not Like The Wind ........................................................... 46 Dream for Anne Sexton ................................................................................................ 47 Freeway Spring Song .................................................................................................... 49 Saturday Afternoon in a Coffeeshop ............................................................................ 52 How Not To Have An Affair ........................................................................................ 53 Fifteen Wild Decembers ............................................................................................... 56 Lyotard in LaGuardia .................................................................................................... 57 Daughter of Descartes ................................................................................................... 58 Having It Out With My Fertility ................................................................................... 60 Ghost of Zygotes Past ................................................................................................... 61 Cropping ....................................................................................................................... 62 That Break-Up .............................................................................................................. 63 caution: do not use with mono devices ......................................................................... 65 Sex and Housekeeping .................................................................................................. 66 7 INTRODUCTION: CONFESSIONALISM AND THE DESIRABILITY OF THE QUOTIDIAN The other night I had a dream. I was on a bus filled with confessional poets. No one famous was there, just your average stereotype: sexy (oh so sexy) women bitterly raving about being abused by their fathers and lovers, self-abasing men thinking about how they might get to be the next lover of the sexy woman beside them, and everyone talking insistently and loudly about nothing but themselves. In the dream I tried to talk to one, a woman who was all cleavage with mascara running down her face from her copious tears. All questions led back to her; politics, the economy, the weather, everything revolved around her with no discussion of anything else. Her logic was flawed and she struck me as slightly hysterical, bordering on manic laughter at times. I found myself wondering: Why am I on this bus? Should I be on it in the first place? Where is it actually going? My dream seems to represent the worst stereotype of the general public (and of some other poets) about confessionalism. In her exploration of the allure of bad- girl imagery in confessional poetry, Lucia Perillo summarizes this perception saying that confessional poetry has "come to mean a large degree of self-absorption combined with poorly edited melodrama" (Perillo 123). This definition is problematic for many reasons. Can't all poets be accused at one time or another of self-absorption? And if melodrama consists of overdrawn appeals to emotion then it seems that what constitutes melodrama is subjective, leaving no poet ever secure of the label of confessionalism. Plus, I don't like this definition. My background in education makes me shudder to think of being self- 8 absorbed and my background as a former melodramatic adolescent girl makes me smell the Aqua Net and Dr. Pepper. Some may want to dismiss confessional poetry this way, but I've grown out of these things. Yet something draws me to the label. Something tells me that my poetry fits under confessionalism, but not under this particular conceptualization of it. Yet more widely accepted, less vitriolic, descriptions still do not seem to make me any happier. According to Steven Gould Axelrod, there are three characteristics of confessional poetry:"an undisguised exposure of painful personal event…a dialectic of private matter with public matter…and an intimate, unornamented style"(98). But can anything ever be wholly undisguised in poetry? Can't all poetry be said to be an interplay between private and public? Don't many poets use plain language and create an air of closeness with their readers? Even though this definition makes space for my poetry, it might provide just a little too much wiggle room. Using this definition poets like Ted Kooser and Mark Jarman could be placed in the confessional mode alongside Kim Addonizio and Sharon Olds. This seems not

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