DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/04ZW-X297
Defense Date
2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
David Wojahn
Second Advisor
Kathleen Graber
Abstract
Stained Glass, Depicting Absence is a collection of poetry that weaves between the speaker’s familial history in an eastern Ohio coal town, the speaker’s return to a Catholic faith left behind by her family, the storied relationship between French medieval Catholic scholars Heloise d'Argenteuil and Peter Abelard, and the speaker’s own restless and complicated relationships and the small and daily conversions they bring her to. These poems are, at their core, devotional. Each of the collection’s threads return again and again to the ways that the observable and imperfect things of this world—from Pittsburgh’s bridges and Wheeling’s crumbling buildings, to Heloise’s erotic desires, letters, and loss, to thin apartment walls and windowless English department offices—testify to what exists between and beyond, and to a God who remains close and personally knowable not merely in spite of, but because of, the many failures of our language, our loves, and our selves.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-5-2025