On the sense of loss and regaining a sense of wonder in the twentieth century

This doctoral dissertation concerns the grievous sense of lack, baseness, of abuse and neglect, and much worse, genocide; that which typifies much of the course of modern twentieth century culture. These poetic writings and works of creative non-fiction are a very serious and playful artistic attempt to represent that sensibility of loss, and to, at the same time, reveal a yearning for an authentic characterization of owe, of a mystical sensibility. A mystical sensibility that might provide transcendent leverage from which social conditions might be identified more clearly, and transformed radically. The machinations of materiality in all its inexorability, that range of the pressing practices of misery and glory are a central underlying driving principle of this work. These writings, it was earnestly hoped, are informed by the insights of the American Renaissance period, but are deeply influenced by a more recent modern critical sensibility, more vividly aware of pressing, sometimes devastating anxieties