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Abstract
My fourth book and my dissertation, Today Was Lilies, proposes and executes a hybridization of several lineages of experimental American poetry with more traditional narrative modes and forms. As theory might be seen moving toward narrative, I instantiate narrative poetry moving toward theory, albeit theory-in-practice. Throughout the collection I pair multifaceted, ecstatic tracing of family mythologyreal and imaginedalongside poems without discernible selves/speakers, resulting in a dialectical body of work that ideally hasto speak colloquiallya little something for everyone. Today Was Lilies stages my update of a Stevensian supreme fictionsomething at once holistic and otherinflected throughout by strands of the New York, Oulipo, Language, Witness, and Post-Confessional schools.