Record Details
Drum song
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Drum song |
| Names |
Wasson, Michael
(creator) Richter, Jennifer (advisor) |
| Date Issued | 2014-04-10 (iso8601) |
| Note | Graduation date: 2014 |
| Abstract | Drum Song is a long poem that explores how speech and silence interplay between the architecture of space and the tension inherent in a tribal funeral ceremony. The poem throughout attempts to bridge together the father figure's death and the echoing images that follow. It locates conditions and domestic locations of the Nez Perce Reservation while, at the same time, dramatizing the speaker's observations via rhythm, arrangement, imagery, repetition, and reverberation, among others. By bearing witness and moving through thresholds separating youth and responsibility, these pages record grief from a cultural lens, showcasing such fractal strings of visuals and sounds. It also braids together tribal language and myth, ongoing experience, and triggered past memories. Throughout, the speaker participates in methods of tradition: The watchful wake, the dawn burial, ritualistic mourning, and finally its quiet aftermath. Aesthetically, crafted effects of slow motion and reversal bookend Drum Song. This emphasizes a cyclical, almost cinematic approach to the epic tradition, thus, contributing to the contemporary epic by making full circle from the home and back again. These lyrical pieces ultimately thread together a portrait of grief in the context of reservation survival. |
| Genre | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Topic | Poetry |
| Identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/1957/49224 |
