Since the publication of Letters to a Stranger in 1973 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, uncertainty and intrigue have circulated around the book's author, Thomas James (born Thomas Edward Bojeski). In the wake of his 1974 suicide at the age of 27, James left behind Letters to a Stranger as his only published collection of poetry, a collection which quickly fell out of print and into obscurity. In many ways, Letters to a Stranger and its author should have been lost to history. Letters to a Stranger received a small and limited release and received mixed reviews. However, against the odds, the collection continues to be devoured and distributed by a small group of devoted readers who remain captivated by James' skill as a poet. The aims of my project are large and lofty. It aims to search for James: in his life and afterlife and within his poetry, hoping to both make sense of his emotional expressivity and provide a substantial framework for future study of James. A biographical study of James has not been attempted since Brock-Broido's introduction in 2008. I wanted to see what I might be able to find with the resources available to me now. I then wanted to use my research to better understand Letters to a Stranger. In Chapter One, I attempt to further flesh out James' life using my original research. I explore the ways in which Brock-Broido's framing of James' life has impacted the way in which James is understood by contemporary readers. James has come to be sometimes understood as a \"suicidal genius\" whose work is deeply connected to his suicide. I compare my research into James' life against the framework of James' life Brock-Broido establishes in her introduction. I attempt to demythologize James as a \"suicidal genius\" and instead contextualize James' life in relation to his class, sexuality, and suicide. In Chapter Two, I explore how confessional readings of James' poetry have furthered the notion that James' poetry can be used to draw conclusions about his life. Readings of James that conflate his biography with his poetry situate him within the school of confessional poetry, a movement which arose in the late 1950s and aimed to give the reader the impression that they were seeing the poet's private thoughts on display in public. This movement gave rise to many problematic associations between the poet's work and their biography. In the most extreme cases, such as with Sylvia Plath, confessional readings conflated a poet's work with their suicide. The knowledge of James' suicide inevitably shifts how we understand Letters to a Stranger, however, it does not have to reduce Letters to a Stranger to a suicide note. While James was undeniably inspired by the specific confessional movement and grapples with its conventions throughout Letters to a Stranger, ultimately reading James' poetry as confessional is limiting as poetry contains an artificially construction self. Instead, I suggest we understand the ways in which James' poems are confessional and may help to explain the deep emotional connections many readers forge with his work without using Letters to a Stranger as indicative of James' personal thoughts or feelings. In Chapter Three, I offer the framework of intertextuality as a potential alternative to biographical readings of James. Letters to a Stranger is sometimes criticized for its similarities to Sylvia Plath's final collection of poetry, Ariel. However, I argue that intertextuality can be a deeply personal and cathartic endeavor and analyze the ways in which James' engagement with Plath can be understood as a place where James' personal emotional expressivity can be definitively located in his work. Finally, I expand this argument of intertextuality to the analysis of Brock-Broido's poem \"Domestic Mysticism,\" which directly engages with James' poem \"Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh XXI Dynasty\" in my Epilogue. Through her own intertextuality, Brock-Broido reveals her deeply personal connection to James' writing and provides an overview to how she views this story. Brock-Broido emphasizes the concept of rebirth throughout her telling of James' story, which extends into her intertextual engagement with James.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Thomas James","Letters to a stranger","Confessional poetry"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 24217