We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
The Undying Work of Fathers in Natasha Trethewey, Adam Vines, and Cormac McCarthy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2021
Aligning theories of objecthood and poetic sound, this essay analyzes three important writers of the current American South – Natasha Trethewey, Adam Vines, and Cormac McCarthy – whose lyric renderings speak to undeadness on integrated planes. Undeadness reveals what is distinct about poetry through a formal reading of sound as an undead force, if we understand poetic rhythm as a disembodied presence that evokes the unnamable space between words and sounds. Further, these writers’ striking motifs of deathliness provide a reference frame for translating the otherwise undefined field of poetic rhythm. Finally, the ethos of the undead is attached to the father figure, who takes on mythic strains, existing in a state of undeath. The father’s lasting presence carries on most powerfully in his child repeating, while revising, the rituals of his labor. Per this vision of undeadness, the value of generative work bears us beyond irruptive pasts, damaged and damaging environs, and compensatory narratives.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
