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"The Bright Clay Forest" and "The Wanderer Fantasy". (Original writing);
Abstract
The epigraph for The Bright Clay Forest reads, "Reality is the essence of both Nightmare and Redemption" (anonymous). The concerns of this poetry collection, as well as of the novel The Wanderer Fantasy, correspond to this epigraph. The "nightmare poems" of The Bright Clay Forest chronicle female adolescence in archetypal rather than in strictly realistic terms, and evoke the psychological struggle of a particular type of adolescent--a sensitive, usually artistic female adolescent intent on developing and sustaining her sensitivity, her vision, in a world dominated by male cruelty. Because artistic and psychological dislocation is the intent of these poems, as well as of The Wanderer Fantasy, (corresponding, in painterly terms, to strong, disturbing primary colors), the language is incandescent, Hopperesque. In The Bright Clay Forest's "redemption poems," the epigraph's "Nightmare" is replaced by an attempt to understand the cruelty of the male world and, through this hard-won knowledge, achieve spiritual, social, or political "Redemption"; thus the language becomes tougher, more taut, more overtly "realistic." Therefore, toward its conclusion, the larger themes of The Bright Clay Forest come into focus, including the necessity for love in a mortal world, and the importance of new myth in service of a vision more all-embracing, tender, even while it acknowledges the brutality of the past.
Subject Area
American literature
Recommended Citation
Brown-Davidson, Terri Lynette, ""The Bright Clay Forest" and "The Wanderer Fantasy". (Original writing);" (1995). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9614980.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9614980