The Random House Dictionary of the English Language and the Poetry of Tina Darragh

Abstract

Chapter 5 considers the work of Tina Darragh, which repeatedly turns to various dictionaries as explicit sources. Once again, reading the poems in tandem with the particular dictionaries used in their composition corrects previous critical accounts of the work and its origins. The chapter argues for the significance of Darragh’s interest in optical illusions and the continuation of that interest in her 1981 collection On the Corner to Off the Corner, where a comparison of the dictionaries used as its sources reveals a visual interest in the typography and graphic illustrations of the dictionary page. The comparisons further reveal that like Coolidge (as discussed in Chapter 5), Darragh understands the dictionary not just as typographical material, but as a three-dimensional object.