DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/HK6V-M484
Defense Date
2018
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
David Wojahn
Second Advisor
Sonja Livingston
Third Advisor
Dr. Bryant Mangum
Abstract
If Not the Body is a collection of poems centered around the physical, female body—the body in peril, the body as continuation, the body as revelation, the body as variable. Tracing both a literal and metaphorical lineage over five sections, these poems reckon with a personal, familial, and regional history in an attempt to answer the collections’ repeated questions: “What am I made of?” and “If illness uglies the world, / what redeems it?”
Drawing from personal experience, family history, and reckoning with mathematic, logical, and temporal limitations, Null Hypothesis: Essays focuses on what it means to embody, to experience. With particular attention to and emphasis on the self-consciousness of writing, these essays attempt to exemplify the inevitable frameshift afforded by illness, and how our bodies, our selves, our relationships, faith, and even our memories—as embodied things—manifest and matter in the corporeal world.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-7-2018