DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/WKR5-W147
Defense Date
2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
David Wojahn
Second Advisor
Sonja Livingston
Third Advisor
Kathleen Graber
Fourth Advisor
Joshua Eckhardt
Abstract
On Earth is a collection of poems celebrating, investigating, and documenting human relationships, spiritual devotion, and both natural and cultivated environments. The focus of all five sections is largely agricultural and botanical, reflecting often on the writer’s experience of farming in Maryland and South Carolina.
Onionlight is a long-form segmented essay that leaps between diverse topics including gastronomy, the agricultural and ethnobotanical history of onions, the history and culture of Bermuda, scallop shell fossils found in present-day Virginia, bulb flowers in the Amaryllidaceae family, intimate relationships, personal history, love, marriage, the specific history of the Vidalia onion, and farm experiences in the South. Short “onion epigraphs” from writers like C.D. Wright, Mary Oliver, Lucille Clifton, and Carol Ann Duffy link the individual segments.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-6-2019