Date of Award
5-1-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Abstract
post~conscious is a collection of poems that attempts to explore the potential of what may be described as a fractal rhetoric. As anyone can know or find out, the term fractal does not only describe pretty, self-similar shapes, like snowflakes, but at its mathematical core describes a set of values which are derived from convoluting and reiterating an algorithm, so that if A2+B=A and A=0 and B=1, then A=1. At this point one simply drops the new value for A (1) back into the equation and solves for yet another, new value for A (2). Of course, in reality, B is not a real number, but an imaginary one, such as 1i, so that every iteration of A is confined to a complex number plane and will, as, for instance, in the case of the very well-known Mandelbrot Set, never exceed 2. But, of course, there is an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 2. However, the importance of fractal geometry for post~conscious is not that the fractal provides a formula for understanding human thought (though it may) or for creating poetry. The importance rests in the more symbolic, parallel induction that utterances which are limited to an imaginary plane or environment or subject, may, after numerous iterations, begin to cohere into a thing that resembles the imagination proper. Of course, one has no image for the imagination other than every image. This paradox is post~conscious' raison d'être. As has been stated, yet not explained, post~conscious attempts to make use of a fractal rhetoric. Yet because a rhetoric does not rely upon somatic phenomena, such as images, sounds, or touches, to exist, but may exist in a purely semiotic form/nonform, yet can be simulated structurally with language, yet not with just any aspect of language, but predominantly with syntactical cleverness, post~conscious may attempt to delineate the form of the fractal rhetoric which may be supposed to resemble the imagination proper, if such a nonity can be said to exist anywhere, or at any time, outside of itself. Thus, post~conscious:
Recommended Citation
Moser, Nicklaus O., "post~conscious" (2017). Creative Writing. 137.
https://scholarworks.alaska.edu/uaf_grad_crwriting/137
Handle
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/7626