Annette Abma

Wilfrid Laurier University, Lazaridis School of Business & Economics, Faculty Member

Wilfrid Laurier University, English & Film Studies, Adjunct

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Annette Abma received her PhD in 2000 from McMaster University and has taught courses in Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Academic Writing at McMaster University (1998-2008) and Wilfrid Laurier University (2007-present). She currently teaches at the Lazardis School of Business and Economics.

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Papers by Annette Abma

Figures of mind in the poetry of W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens

The noetics ofform seeks to name the dominant mode of thinking represented by a particular poet. ... more The noetics ofform seeks to name the dominant mode of thinking represented by a particular poet. By the term 'form,' I refer not to the various verse forms such as the sonnet, villanelle, or sestina, but to the more general forms of poetic discourse, of how the poem imitates an act of human consciousness. By "modes of thinking," I refer to such distinctions such as 'analytical,' ' logical,' 'meditative,' 'intuitive,' and the like. Louis Martz introduced the idea of meditative poetry as a distinct genre in his essay, "Wallace Stevens: The World as Meditation" (1958) and it is this sense of poetry as ''the act of the mind" that I employ here. Both Yeats and Stevens write in the romantic tradition of meditative poetry, in which a speaking subject considers the relationship between consciousness and nature. Critics such as Joseph Carrol, Joseph Riddel, Harold Bloom, and Helen Vendler, have convincingly argued that Stevens and Yeats are essentially romantic poets, continuing an exploration of the relationship between reality and the imagination Though the romantic tradition is, indeed, the origin of their meditative form, Yeats and Stevens approach the process of meditation in diverse ways. The critic Carol Christ offers a way of examining the romantic tradition in relation to Victorian poetics which points towards an important dichotomy in Yeats's poetry. In Chapter One, I examine how Yeats, as one of "the last romantics," is grounded in the romantic sensibility, yet-like the Victorians-is also suspicious of it. Carol Christ contends that, though the Victorians are concerned with the mind and its processes, they "'react with varying degrees of discomfort to the Romantic conception of the imagination" (4). For the Victorians, a purely subjective reading of "descriptive-meditative-descriptive" as a corrective to G.M. Harper's term "conversation poems." Though the speaking subject is addressing his thoughts to an implied listener-a sister, spouse, or friend, for example-he is also looking inward, contemplating the world and his relationship with his surroundings: the meditation is, for Abrams, the central theme of the romantic lyric. Consider, for example, the meditative section of Coleridge's "The Eolian Harp," where he meditates not only on the outward scene but on his own processes of thought: And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon, Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main, And tranquil muse upon tranquillity; Full many a thought uncalled and undetained, And many idle flitting phantasies, Traverse my indolent and passive brain, As wild and various as the random gales That swell and flutter on this subject Lute! And what ifall of animated nature Be but organic Harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps 13 Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all? The state ofmind which Coleridge's poem imitates is that of meditative reverie, in which thoughts are "uncalled and undetained," invited to come and go as they occur. The figure ofthe harp as an image ofconsciousness reinforces this passivity. Ideas are received, Coleridge implies, from an even larger consciousness which is seemingly beyond nature, "the Soul of each, and God of all." Rather than nature, Coleridge's true subject is the correspondence between human consciousness and this larger, abstract consciousness perceived through nature. Meditation, for many romantics, concerns the mind's ability to access not the natural but the supernatural world. This form of meditation elevates the unconsciousrevealed through passive reverie and dream-above that ofconscious awareness. In Wordsworth's "Tintem Abbey," for example, the speaker seeks a "mood" in which "the heavy and the weary weight ofthis unintelligible world, I Is lightened":-that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,-Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

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FIGURES OF MIND IN THE POETRY OF W.B. YEATS AND WALLACE STEVENS By

This study examines representations of thinking and consciousness in the poetry of W.B. Yeats and... more This study examines representations of thinking and consciousness in the poetry of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens. In discussing the processes ofthinking in poetry, I have borrowed Ian Fletcher's term "noetics " which "names the field and the precise activity occurring when the poet introduces thought as a discriminable dimension ofthe form and meaning ofthe poem " (3-4). I have further sub-divided Fletcher's term into "noetics of form " and "noetics offigure " the first exploring the dominant modes ofthinking which the poems imitate, the latter examining the images which are consistently used to represent consciousness and/or processes ofthinking. In many ways, this study takes as its premise Stevens ' theory ofthe poetic imagination as either ''marginal " or "central. " I explore this theory ofpoetry in relation to a noetics ofform and figure in the poetry of the "marginal" thinking Yeats and...

Writing Toward the Word: Deconstruction and Negative Theology in Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable

... Title. Writing Toward the Word: Deconstruction and Negative Theology in Samuel Beckett's... more

Writing Toward the Word: Deconstruction and Negative Theology in Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable

... Title. Writing Toward the Word: Deconstruction and Negative Theology in Samuel Beckett's... more

Writing Toward the Word: Deconstruction and Negative Theology in Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable

... Title. Writing Toward the Word: Deconstruction and Negative Theology in Samuel Beckett's... more

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Figures of mind in the poetry of W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens

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WRITING TOWARD THE WORD

This study examines Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable with respect to deconstructive literary theory... more This study examines Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable with respect to deconstructive literary theory and negative theology, exploring a possible homology between these two discursive stategies. My reading involves a three-part investigation into Beckett's text as an aporetic discourse which simultaneously promises Rmeaning R while rendering such RmeaningR impossible. The study begins with a close 12 36 65 91 • 96

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Figures of mind in the poetry of W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens

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FIGURES OF MIND IN THE POETRY OF W.B. YEATS AND WALLACE STEVENS By