Lessons in Alchemy

David Villegas, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Lessons in Alchemy is an artifice with a constant preoccupation/obsession with the transformation of silence; specifically a transmutation that gathers insight from the pseudo-science known as alchemy. Although the poems in the collection take on other themes and functions of language, the foundation that brings unity to the collection and to metasilence, can be boiled down to the following: the function and treatment of evocations as the essential units of poetry, the construction of evocation webs as an artifice that will multiply the meaning of ideas/images, and most importantly, an intrusive usage of silence or space in order to deconstruct and alter syntax to ultimately infuse or alchemize that silence/space with meaning.

Subject Area

Modern literature|Creative writing

Recommended Citation

Villegas, David, "Lessons in Alchemy" (2006). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI1439482.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI1439482

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