Everything is Paris

Abstract

I began formulating the subject matter for this thesis last semester while I was reading works of Classical Greek literature, everything from Homer to Aeschylus, and studying the myth and culture that surrounded them. I am already obsessed with media and popular culture and, while writing an early set of poems, Paris Hilton got injected into a poem about Clytemnestra. From there, I began to work on blending the classical with the contemporary to explore the nature of self-identity in such a media ravaged culture, where what you project successfully is the only image of you that people accept. I began writing in forms and then in solid prose paragraphs. I wanted to work to accomplish a melding of the prose we see in every magazine with traditional poetic lines and think that this successfully lends itself to making each stand out immediately based upon which it is in. The collection plays off the same themes and each poem bounces off of other poems, building up to a question, really, about how much of a single being we can pull ourselves into. In doing so, the collection stands on its own and possesses direction, not to mention some wonderful poetry.