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The Body Negotiating Unprecedented Movement, Mei Bock

Honors Projects

A collection of poems exploring threads including the Lower East Side, immigration, stray animals, art, and Chinese-American identity.

Warriors, Mothers, And Queens: Weighty Women Of Myths And Legends, Betsy Packard

Theses and Dissertations--English

Because traditional stories, myths, and legends have a patriarchal orientation, often portraying women as negative or weak characters, post-modern literary criticism calls for a feminist response. These poems are written in the genre of feminist revisionist mythology. Through the medium of poetry, women in these stories are provided with voices outside of the previously accepted patriarchal framework and challenge the exclusionary theories of Joseph Campbell. The stories are told through a perspective informed by feminist theory.

The Youngest, Trezlen Drake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of poems that considers life in a southern Black family, memory, nostalgia, dysfunction, race and gender, and generational trauma. These poems are influenced by poetry, fiction, music, popular culture, and scholarship, each providing a different perspective on life and language to talk about that which can sometimes be unspeakable.

A recurring character in this collection is the girlchild, reminiscent of Marge Piercy’s character in “Barbie Doll.” The girlchild here is the figure of the woman or girl who experiences trauma, and what some consider to be unspeakable.

These poems are also an exploration and disruption …

Summer Troubles And Other Poems, Jeremy Thomas Burke

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Following the example of Gary Snyder's "Axe Handles," I introduce my poetics and poems in the preface. Other influences, including Lucille Clifton, John Ashbery, and Anne Carson, are also explored. The original poetry that follows the preface attempts to enact the language of philosophical exploration, relationships, memory, conversation, and meditation while paying close attention to the musicality of everyday speech and avoiding clear and specific conclusions.

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided …

Try To Remember Breath, Rita Chapman

Theses

A collection of original poems.

Girl-Junk, Sugar-Funk, Natalie Tombasco

Graduate Thesis Collection

A poetic look into the life of a girl which centers around food, alcoholism, mommy issues, sexuality, identity and mortality.

Frida's Daughter, Myrta Vida

Theses

The purpose of my creative writing is to highlight a group of U.S. citizens still woefully underrepresented in literature proper: the Latinx middle class. I’m keenly interested in exploring Puerto Rican and first- and second-generation Latinx immigrant stories. Even though some of the experiences from these groups have been elegantly visited by writers such as Giannina Braschi, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Julia Alvarez, and others, there are nuances to the Latinx middle class experience that are yet to be uncovered. Being stuck in the cultural, linguistic, socio-economic, and political middles in a country that has recently taken a largely nationalist …

Tearing Up The Tallgrass, Brett Salsbury

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This creative thesis project is a culmination of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree at UNLV. The thesis—currently titled Tearing up the Tallgrass—was composed entirely during my graduate semesters at UNLV. As a book of poetry, it explores the dynamics of humans in nature, white privilege, objectivity, fact- and myth-making, and artistic practice. Written under the supervision of Claudia Keelan (committee chair) and Donald Revell (committee member), my committee further includes P. Jane Hafen (English) and Pierre Lienard (Anthropology). Their disparate subject and genre interests are meant to diversify the feedback received during this project’s composition. Some …

We Who Have Never Bled, Betty Frances Fisher

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The poetry in We Who Have Never Bled explores landscapes of the personal and the mythic, centering women in a position of both traveler on and witness to this journey that is both violent and hopeful, both personal and universal.

According To The Gospel Of Haunted Women, Judith Roney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to the Gospel of Haunted Women is a collection of seventy-five poems divided into four sections. The voices speaking within, are, indeed haunted by varying definitions. They bespeak complex, troubled emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety, yet work towards expressions of courage. The dead and the living are cajoled and accused, while others are provided a format through which they may be heard long after their mouths have closed. The poems are arranged in four sections. Section I, “We Begin,” consists of memoir pieces from the poet's early life. Section II, “We Speak,” is a dedicated space for …

The Creative Writing Of Poetry In The California Secondary Schools, Wesley Mills Pugh

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Creation was once a prerogative of the gods. For ages the magic word "genius" served as a harrier to isolate from the common man that one in whom burned the spark of constructive originality. In the past we have never considered the possibility of his being one of the teeming throng who Invade our classrooms daily; or having given way to such an absurdity, we have hastily dismissed the Idea, feeling that, if he were, his presence would surely be announced by the choir invisible or some other divine agency.

Of recent years we have experienced a change of opinion. …