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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.
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