The Wicks They Stimulate

The Wicks They Stimulate is a collection of poems and translations. Through a variety of forms and images, the poems were written with a predominant attention to concentration, clarity, and persona. The poems use tone and rhythm to work through different phenomenological perspectives to see words or phrases from changing angles, often employing spare language and short lines, but sometimes using longer, more prosaic forms. Engaged with the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, these poems pair subtly changing rhythms with shifting pronouns to engage questions about rhythm and alterity. Fragmented syntax and heavy enjambment draw attention to the function words within the poems to highlight the role these words play in the construction of thoughts and relationships. The translations are from French, Middle Welsh, Classical Chinese, and Homeric Greek. Many of these translations diverge formally from their source while keeping the tone and images consistent with the original. The translation practice is informed by translators such as Sawako Nakayasu and Wong May. Two longer works at the end, “Coordinate Sentences” and “We Between Us,” serve as formal foils for the first section of the manuscript. These poems maintain the thesis’s interest in rhythm and alterity but branch away from the lyric mode into aphorisms and epic.