Date of Award

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts in Writing

Department

Creative Writing

First Advisor

Michael Castro

Second Advisor

Spencer Hurst

Third Advisor

Glenn Irwin

Abstract

This thesis project is a poem series about the spiritual growth of an archetypal messianic figure through his relationship to the growth of secondary characters as interpreted via the tarot deck.

Great care was taken throughout the piece to correlate directly the poetry with the symbol sets represented by the tarot. The individual pieces, for each piece of poetry can be taken individually as each of the cards can be apprehended individually, tie into both the artwork and the interpretation of the card to which the poem is connected. This is straightforward with the interpretations as they are relatively similar in meaning between major decks. The artwork aspect, however, brought some complexities. The series was written with an eye not only to the Rider-Waite cards, which appear with the text of th.is project, but also the Universal deck. This has led to some seeming discrepancies in the poems, but these are only seeming (e.g., the fifth poem in the "Coins" section includes references to both graphics-"mendicants" from the Rider-Waite and "Buddhist hammered Christ in the eye" from the Universal-but even without that the interpretation of the card involves the benefits obtained from breaking from the material world and its suffering to pursue spiritual endeavors).

Further, each section of the poem series relates to the suit which it represents. Coins and cups are feminine suits, and those sections of the series relate to female secondary characters. Swords and staves arc masculine suits, and those sections of the poem are focused on the masculine main character. Further, the poems and the cards progress forward from a materially centered view (coins) up through a spiritually centered view (trumps). Swords represent contention; cups represent sexual union; staves represent new growth: each of these themes, likewise, is represented by the poetry in that section.

The development of the central character, his messianic journey, follows the development of ideas contained in the tarot set. This journey, this mystery (in the original religious sense), is a central cultural story that waits every generation to be refashioned, remade, or retold. The world longs to discover how to be perfected.

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