UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI _____________ , 20 _____ I,______________________________________________, hereby submit this as part of the requirements for the degree of: ________________________________________________ in: ________________________________________________ It is entitled: ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Approved by: ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ SCRAPBOOK A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.) in the Department of English and Comparative Literature of the College of Arts and Sciences 2001 by C. Lynn Shaffer B.A., Morehead State University, 1993 M.A., Morehead State University, 1995 Committee Chair: Don Bogen C. Lynn Shaffer Dissertation Abstract This dissertation, a collection of original poetry by C. Lynn Shaffer, consists of three sections, predominantly persona poems in narrative free verse form. One section presents the points of view of different individuals; the other sections are sequences that develop two central characters: a veteran living in modern-day America and the historical figure Secondo Pia, a nineteenth-century Italian lawyer and photographer whose name is not as well known as the image he captured with his camera, the Shroud of Turin. Though many themes are present, the poems’ main concerns include the photographic nature of memory as an alleged recorder of experience, the act of viewing, and the faith, or lack of it, that we place in those phenomena. In addition, the poems investigate how, after tragedy, memory can overwhelm an individual until a person’s identity transforms his personality, as is the case with many veterans. In contrast, other poems explore the effect of the mind’s refusal—due to sickness or grief—to allow memories to occur. Collectively, through the characters’ struggles, the poems speculate about how memory functions within the subtext of loss. The dissertation also includes a critical essay about biblical and apocryphal revision in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, revision similar to that Alicia Suskin Ostriker has observed in contemporary women’s poetry. The essay explores the way in which both novels challenge the Christian narrative that transforms sex— biological fact—into gender—culturally assigned roles based on sex. Acknowledgements Many people have supported me in a multitude of ways, and each of them has helped make this poetry collection possible. First, I must thank my mother, Sue Howard, and grandmother, Dorothy Clevenger, for their interest in and encouragement of my writing, including tireless attendance at numerous poetry readings. I am grateful to many other family members, including my stepfather, Randy Howard, and my grandfather, John Clevenger. Sincere thanks to Michele Griegel McCord and Cynthia Ris, whose friendship has sustained me and whose kind assistance helped tremendously with final decisions about the content and structure of this collection. I am fortunate to have to thank other dear friends who have supported me in countless ways: Juliana Vice, Marta Tomes, Cathy Silvers, Vivé Griffith, Brad Vice, and many more friends and fellow writers that I have encountered over the years. Many thanks to the instructors I consider friends: Don Bogen, John Drury, Andrew Hudgins, Jim Schiff, George Eklund, and especially Michelle Boisseau, whose poems made me want to continue writing and whose encouragement helped me think I could contribute something to poetry. Thanks to Robert McDowell for his helpful feedback at the West Chester poetry conference. Lastly, I want to thank my husband, Steve, my greatest supporter and a person so wonderful that he continues to defy my every attempt to write a love poem that does him justice. Some of the following poems, in their current forms or in earlier versions, have appeared or are forthcoming in Beauty for Ashes Poetry Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, and The Raintown Review. Table of Contents I Getting On With It 6 Letters 7 Four Weeks Home 9 The Oldest Daughter Remembers 10 Long Weekend 11 After Killing The Dog 14 Fight 15 Love Story 16 Why You Don’t Talk About War 17 Scrapbook: Daughter to Father 18 Candid 19 II The Viewing 21 Funeral Home Photographer 22 Woman with Cats 24 River Around A Village 27 Fear of Spiders 28 Crow Summer 30 - 1 - The Bus Driver 32 The Bus Driver’s Wife 33 War Story 34 Funeral Quilt at the Highlands Museum 36 Young Woman Without Memory 37 III First Child 42 Camera Obscura 43 Sacred Art 44 Streets of Turin 45 Secondo Among the Crowd 46 The Hunt 48 Secondo Speaks to an Accuser 49 Fever 50 Funeral 51 Secondo’s Questions for the Heavenly Father 52 Mother’s Question to Son 53 Confession: Son to Mother 54 Ysabel 56 This Night 57 - 2 - Child Born Late in Life 58 Secondo Imagines Heaven 59 Il Faccia del Dio 60 The Repentant Magdalene 61 Questioning the Word: Biblical and Apocryphal Revision in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace 62 - 3 - There is a history of darkness in the making of images. Wright Morris - 4 - I - 5 - Getting On With It Over there he walked the back lines, a boy trying not to think of home. The words of his father distant, unbending: Buck up, boy, buck up. After the war, shocked at being alive, he went home to start over. Twenty years later, the lawn mower caught, he jerked too hard, and he crawled uphill, wounded, again away from the thing that hurt him, and again in the trees every insect and bird— the machine-noise fading—began to chatter. Every leaf hid creatures whose hearts beat steadily while he bled. Buck up, boy, buck up. He would give up pieces of himself to live, he’d done it before, though in a country he’d never even seen in books. He ripped his belt from his pants and cinched his leg, knew to save his energy, and made it to the door. What he thought then would be his response to sympathy later: Only two toes gone, and not even ones you need. Buck up. - 6 - Letters Dear Mom Thanks for the chocolate bars. They were warm and sweet, and good as anything I’ve ever eaten. And don’t worry. I’ll send a note every week. This will be our story, and it can’t end until At last the soldier, older and wiser, returns home. Tell Dad I’m doing my duty and taking care of my feet. Boots don’t last long here, and you know I was always rough on shoes. Rebecca Sorry I haven’t written sooner, but I like to think I won’t be here long enough to write, like the time we were first dating and I went to Denver to stay with my Aunt Rill. Remember, I beat most of the postcards home, and we read them together in bed. I almost forgot to tell you—I found this mutt hanging around camp for food. He’s missing a leg and ugly as sin, but we feed him a scrap when we can. There’s a picture of him on the film I’m sending. Dear Dad Over here, you have to be cautious. Even the kids are dangerous, they say. Today a little girl ran up to us, and fell back so suddenly I thought she tripped. But then I realized [no stanza break] - 7 - you don’t trip backward. Have you gotten any of my letters? It’s hard to tell from what you write in yours. I’m sending a picture of the spring we found. In one of the shots, you’ll see me swimming. I bet it looks like summer camp to you. Please throw out the letters I send as soon as Mom reads them. Envelopes pile up, beg to be reread and studied over. You know how she worries. No use saving things like they were people. - 8 - Four Weeks Home At night, reporters remind us that death is local— a young father not seen for two days. Kept home from war by bad eyesight. Missing in a town so small you notice, and pitch in to look. He could have surfaced with a story to explain everything, a sudden urge to head to Cincinnati, impulse forgiven by family in exchange for his life. Eleven weeks later, they found him inside his car in a culvert. For a week at least, he’d survived the bleeding and sat pinned beneath the wheel, hidden from view by the sumac and brush. No one could say he hadn’t suffered or he’d gone quickly. What he must have thought while he waited. Likely as not someone would see the sun glint off the silver fender or reflect in the outside mirror. Chances were good he’d be found sleeping, to be taken from the hot interior to tell of his ordeal over a home-cooked meal and a glass of cold milk. He’d be home soon enough to bury his kid’s turtle that died the morning he left. No way around it, a raw deal, to live just long enough to outlast hope. - 9 - The Oldest Daughter Remembers He choked the tractor and rushed into the barn to see the rats I thought were kittens. He said babies or not they were rats, and snuffed them under his heel. Skulls gave way beneath him. He rubbed his feet on some hay to clean them. As he moved across the field, his shoes splayed mud. The tractor belched, wrenched, made the earth red and pungent. - 10 - Long Weekend I The father has covered his daughter with blankets, secured the window locks, and left the door ajar, a ritual he thinks gladdens her to sleep.