UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY TO LOOT TO HEW & EDEN by EMILY KRUSE CARR A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA JUly2010 © EMILY KRUSE CARR 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-69475-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-69475-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduce, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada 2 Abstract to loot to hew & Eden is a lyric laboratory in which formal experiments in happiness take place. The collection is a poetic interrogation of what happiness is, how one comes to be happy, and how happiness—if it is even possible—might be sustained. The critical approach to loot to hew & Eden takes to happiness has been enriched by ecocriticism and feminism and their cultural critiques. This lyric laboratory contains three sections: "the story will fix you it is there outside your <&" 13 ways of happily: books 1, 2, 3 & 4," and "stories not about love." Throughout these sections, a young housewife relates the narrative of her attempts to place herself within the larger metanarratives informing her life: marriage, motherhood, adulthood, citizenship, and ecology. Inspired by Walt Whitman's "Songs of die Exposition," I explore the housewife as the personification of American identity and destiny and as an alternative to the "all-American hero" (whom she is continually struggling not to fall for). The formal experiments in to loot to hew & Eden are concerned with the relationships amongst genre, lineation, and punctuation. Each of the three sections takes a different generic shape: "the story will fix you" is a lyric essay, "13 ways of happily" is a sequence of lyric poems, and "stories not about love" is a collection of stories in the form of prose poems. In these generic experiments, I think about the ways in which lineation and punctuation reflect critically on the slippage between what the writer intends to say and what the words want to say and on the relations between interpretation and experience. Finally, through my experiments with genre, lineation, and punctuation, I posit four ecological survival techniques that I see as central to the poetics of happiness: echo-location, ontological insubordination, animal attention, and language in heat. Through these survival 2 3 techniques, I hope to posit an ecologically-minded "happily" as an alternative to American happiness, which I see as endlessly optimistic, an insatiable conquering force that has relinquished the future for the great consuming frenzy of the now. Happily, in contrast, is a reorgankation of priorities that finds virtue in itinerancy, interconnectedness, accountability, and sustainability. 3 4 Acknowledgements The individuals who have directly or indirecdy inspired to loot to hew & Eden are too numerous to list. Many of the poets whose work has been influential to my own are listed in the dedications to individual poems. I would like, specifically, to thank the poets with whom I have worked over the past eight years: Tom Wayman, Robert Majzels, Sina Queyras, Daphne Marlatt, Mark Cox, and Sarah Messer. I would like to thank a number of poets with whom I have had only brief contact but who have, none the less, been influential in my continued writing and research: Cynthia Hogue, Kadileen Fraser, Meredidi Quartermain, and Erin Moure. I would also like to thank Erin Wunker, who eased my introduction to critical theory and whose own contributions to feminist thought have inspired my own. Finally, there are a number of poets whom I have not met but whose own work have made mine possible: besmilr brigham, CD. Wright, Forrest Gander, Fanny Howe, Ann Lauterbach, Denis Johnson, Thomas James, and Frank Bidart. Thank you. 4 Dedication Most importantly, none of this work would have been possible without Brad Carr. A simple thank you will never begin to express my appreciation. 5 6 Table of Contents Approval Page ii Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 Dedication 5 Table of Contents 6 Epigraph 9 CRITICAL INTRODUCTION 1 1: to loot to hew <& Eden: experiments in the lyric laboratory 1 2: Nature Poetry vs. Poems of the Natural Sense, & besmilr brigham's Influence on My Work 5 3: "the story will fix you it is there outside your e>"; or, My Life as a Feminist: Autobiography & the Sexual Politics of Meat 21 4: "13 ways of happily": Echo-location & Ontological Insubordination 29 5: "stories not about love": Animal Attention & Language in Heat 43 6: Happily: The Experiment Continues 63 THE STORY WILL FIX YOU IT IS THERE OUTSIDE YOUR &. 65 ]all that other life as green blur[ 66 Jgirlhood replayed rewound a photogene simmering[ 67 jpolitics don't disappear they are going on inside[ 68 Jin the refined lawn of the lord's handkerchieff 69 ]who is the hero & was there a mother involved[ 70 Jfrom a wrong turn to the shock of understandingf 71 Jliving safely in the bright falsenessf 72 Jopen the door get out, climb over the guardrail, walk onto 73 the bridge where the wind tears a handkerchief to shreds [ Jgoodwife of sunset & muse of unmade beds[ 74 ]like the story leaving achilles alive abruptly in that way[ 75 Jstill life in a litde black dress & sprayon tan[ 76 ]mind out through the eyes[ 77 Jreality or, a moment poised before the in/everable—[ 78 Jback the same way go a new way spillf 79 13 WAYS OF HAPPILY 80 Book 1: the journal of elastic perception 81 draft 1, eye, white & spring 82 draft 2, & you know this is your fate to waver 92 draft 3, the flower of having passed through paradise in a dream 101 Book 2, an alphabet of gluing from misshapen wings Ill draft 4, the long fall to dirt heaven 112 draft 5, half a wishbone expressing with broken breast the truth 121 draft 6, dandelion to the instant 129 6 7 Book 3, secret histories of the vector 137 draft 7, scorned as timber, beloved of the sky 138 draft 8, her insides in a special receptacle 146 draft 9, in the meat of my functioning heart 156 Book 4, the art of the elegant integral 166 draft 10, caption for a miniature 167 draft 11, beserk coyote of the spring tense 175 draft 12, american destiny install'd amid the kitchenware 184 postscript, the chapel of the sparrow's body 193 draft 13, slope of the child's everlasting 194 STORIES NOT ABOUT LOVE 206 drama of the forfeit 207 ) a splitbrain grace note 208 ) adam was (not an old man 209 ) unbutton my ribs 210 ) the snake was a woman, she must have been: 211 ) the pour-usness of a passing ego— 212 ) the dream demands verbs— 213 ) alchemy & the soil of original/ sin 214 ) ellipsis, echo & psalm 215 ) no shepherd either, & must be is/ moving on 216 show & tell 217 ) on the first page of each new world's 218 ) forever prey to the eyes 219 ) salt of the unutterably/ human 220 ) what she said, what he said, before/ the fact— 221 ) & he—. in his cruelly bright— 222 ) whosoever has let a minotaur enter them or a sonnet— 223 ) no system of the vernacular 224 ) in last trapeze ecstasy 225 ) what only the birdgene remembers 226 scouts across america 227 ) on the stalk of an instant, unpetal 228 ) bearing the fiction of the white space that divides it, 229 ) in a world all broken out with Sunday,— 230 ) trying to be in love, ok 231 ) gravity, & the cellular life of leaves 232 ) more light—. more air—. something furious & beautiful— 233 ) his 72 hour human— 234 ) which is when in sthenic desperation,— 235 ) facts stem the haemorrhage— 236 amateurs 237 ) rot to the bottom soil of true belief. 238 ) in the spodess eyes of Sunday: oiled, amorous 239 ) like a goldfish in a gladbag 240 7 8 ) & if hope returns it is another hope entirely— 241 ) as gracefully & ripe, to escape— 242 sunday goes on pulling one thing toward another— 242 ) like a greyhound pursued to static, 243 ) the song is a flexible spine,— 244 ) up the