DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/KFBV-6533
Defense Date
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
David Wojahn
Second Advisor
Kathleen Graber
Third Advisor
Richard Fine
Abstract
The poems in this collection are concerned with impermanence, memory, illness, and a desire for the speaker to control and understand the uncontrollable, both in mind and physical body. These poems are often grounded in the concrete and definable scientific world—astronomy, botany, etc.—as a way to interpret and ground oneself in the indefinable aspects of the speaker's world. These poems investigate the pressure one person, one place, and even one’s own body impose on the experience of girlhood in the Deep South. They navigate the relationship between place and the self—the ways in which place cleaves an individual. The environment is a space that embodies narratives of the people who live there, and in turn embeds the speaker in that system of understanding the world and her place in it. These poems also explore the speaker’s relationships, quasi-motherhood, and the aftermath of illness and the toll it takes on body, mind, and personal relationships.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-28-2023