Digital Commons Network^™

A Constellation In Training, Marko C. Capoferri

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Capoferri, Marko, M.F.A., Fall 2023 Creative Writing - Poetry

Light, Loneliness, and Location

Chairperson: Sean Hill

In many better-known works by the 20^th century painter Edward Hopper, I find a locus of visual concerns that overlay the fixations of the majority—if not all—of the poems that comprise my thesis, what I like to think of as the three L’s: light, loneliness, and location (to which I could also add, as secondary colors, longing and landscape). Additionally, there are what Mark Strand identifies as “two imperatives” in Hopper’s work, “the one that urges us to continue and the other that …

Breathing Hard In Beautiful Places, Lars Chinburg

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Chinburg, Lars, M.S., Spring 2024

Breathing Hard in Beautiful Places, Abstract

In Breathing Hard in Beautiful Places, Lars Chinburg explores his connections to the people and places that have made him who he is in a collection of personal essays. The collection is inspired by the talents of many writers–Bill Bryson’s wry travel observations, Norman Maclean’s lyricism on the interplay of nature and family, Sigurd Olson’s gorgeous descriptions of place, and David Sedaris’ knack for drawing hilarity out of the prosaic, among many others.

Many of the essays touch on the power of play as a force for good and …

Green Grass: A Collection Of Short Stories, Julia Wynne

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Within the country club setting, the levels of financial wealth span greatly, from young adults in search of summer employment to businessmen sealing deals on the 18th hole while retired couples vacation in spacious homes situated directly on the course. Often associated with privilege and luxury, golf is much more than just a game, involving defined dress codes, social events, organized leagues, and tournaments. Centered around the lives of staff and members of an Arizona country club, Green Grass is a collection of short stories that uses the game of golf to explore privilege, money, and motivation. Golf is a …

Too Old For Monsters : A Collection Of Stories, L. A. Hause

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

In The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Ursula K. Le Guin writes, “We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?” In my collection of short stories, Too Old for Monsters, I hold out my hands to every reader—the lonely and suffering person, the uncertain and wavering, the joyous and the brave, the growing and the stalling, and the myriad in-betweens. Writing explores the human experience, but this collection also explores the tangled mess of life beyond the merely human. These stories address the bone-saw sharp ache of loss and …

Sudden Oak Death, Jeffrey William Guay

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A novel set contemporaneously in rural Montana, Sudden Oak Death follows two protagonists, Wade and his teenage daughter Paige. Each are fighting different addictions, as Wade is in alcoholism recovery, and Paige recently came home from a drug treatment program. In order to succeed, Paige must reintegrate herself into public high school, despite suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia. Wade is raising his family as a single father, and struggles to maintain his emotional stability in the face of his own recovery.

Give Them Bread, Mara E. Kneafsey

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The title, Give Them Bread, is based off a quote by Roman poet, Juvenal: “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.” The story contains elements of horror, dream-like imagery, and surrealism—a mode of art that, topically, emerged in the early 20^th century. It contains accounts of Italian history, references to commedia dell’arte, and inspired by Italian literary works such as Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and Curzio Malaparte’s macabre novels, Kaputt and La Pelle. The grander purpose of Give Them Bread is to examine the meaning of truth in a political, moral, philosophical, spiritual, and …

Islands In The North, Kirstie Catriona Clinko

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Islands in the North is a coming of age Y.A. novel, set first on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides, then Vashon Island in Washington State. Dwyn is fourteen and three quarters, and she has attended Bridgely School in Manchester, England, since kindergarten. At Bridgely, she can truly be herself. A straight ‘A’ student, an accomplished pianist, a good friend. Dwyn is a stand-in mother for her five-year-old brother, James. Their absent father is a merchant marine who sails the seven seas and is little more than a pen pal for Dwyn. Her abusive mother dates a Scottish …

Water Lake And Other Stories, Allison Rose Levy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This excerpt from the novel Water Lake takes place at an undisclosed time in an undisclosed American location called Water Town. It primarily follows Jason and Holly, who are employees at Water Hardware and lifelong residents of the insular, religious, isolated town. Water Town is in constant industrial and environmental decay and hosts many mysterious natural and social phenomena such as an unusual amount of animal deaths, a gender ratio skewed disproportionately towards men, and a single seal in a local body of water hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. During an episode of impulsivity induced by neurological trauma, …

Asked For Another Mountain, Nichole Lynn Moore

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Biome Within: Conception And Change In The Paradise Valley, Austin Kirchhoff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Biome Within is an essay collection that meditates on change. Born and raised in the Paradise Valley of southwest Montana, Austin recounts stories from her childhood, painting a picture of rural life in the Valley that contrasts with its modern-day incarnation as a luxury get-away and millionaire’s playground. Even as Austin pines for a time and a place that no longer exists, embodying the nostalgia that she identifies in the Valley’s transplants, the reader comes to understand that the author – and her family’s way of making a living – are culpable in creating the changes that she now …

Under Night's Darkness, Alexandra Fiege Ore

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Under Night’s Darkness follows Landry, who has recently been paroled from prison and returns to his family home in rural Montana. He has recently become a born-again Christian and is in the midst of a frantic final attempt to redeem himself after a lifetime dedicated to bullying and cruelty. He’s not only haunted by the specters of domestic abuse and sexual assault, but also by the ghosts of the recently dead. Enraged at the failure of his tragicomic attempts at redemption, Landry commits the sadistic murder of his own brother. The ensuing cycle of revenge destroys Landry’s family and Landry …

Beulahland: A Novel, Emily Ann Marie Nelson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Beulahland follows Esther and Beulah Baxter, a pair of orphaned sisters traveling across the American west with their evangelist uncle in 1994. Raised on the seedy motivational speaking circuit of small towns and youth groups, Esther is determined to free Beulah from this nomadic way of life under from the neglectful care of their uncle August, a fame-chasing bodybuilder who wants to bring the world to God through his demonstrations of physical strength. This plan is put on hold when Beulah falls ill during a routine performance in the wildfire-wracked town of Orchard, Washington, and almost dies; her near-death experience …

Essays And Novel Excerpt, Mirela Music

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Wayfinding, Kalani N. Padilla

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Brave Spaces, Radical Openness, And Youth Loneliness, Taylor Curry, Mariah Thomas, Riese Munoz

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

It is no secret young adults, no matter where in the world they come from, face social pressures with the potential to be isolating. For today’s youth, not only are they feeling the commonplace anxieties about fitting in, finding success, and uncertainty of the future, but these anxieties are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Young adults from all over the globe report feeling more anxious, more depressed, and more lonely. However, it is also no secret that deliberate community building, creation of art and writing as a means of self-exploration, and participation in spaces designed for acceptance fend off these …

Kept Things, Caroline J. Tuss

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The things that occupy our lives tell human stories. They often go beyond literal interpretation, leaving space for places, people, desires, dreams, and ideologies to be signified and examined. Personal history is a well-traveled source of inspiration, and it provides significant, meaningful symbols for the concepts I’m engaging with in my newest collection. My project, titled Kept Things, is a collection of three nonfiction pieces examining why and how things are kept, lost, and discarded, whether we have a choice in the matter or not. The significance of symbols to identity and memory acts as a through-line between each …

Return, Shasta Hecht

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This capstone project is a collection of nonfiction essays that work in collaboration to provide a profile of place. The place of focus is White Pass, the mountain the author has grown up on and experienced for the last twenty-one years. This collection is made up of essays that explore her physical, emotional, and spiritual connection to the land and community of White Pass, while also examining themes of family and identity. Each essay gives a different perspective in regards to the setting. The ultimate purpose of this project is to navigate the complexities of White Pass in regards to …

Witness This Thing So Tender, Erin Marie White

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

At once fantastical and down-to-earth, the poems of Witness This Thing So Tender are concerned with the convergence of the speaker’s many selves and influences. Gritty and mysterious happenings shape the speaker’s physical, emotional, and psychological circumstances in the world. Whether the triggering topic is ecological, parental, or sepulchral, the work of the poems is to examine and integrate the changeable natures of memory and reality.

Each poem in the second movement of the collection, entitled “Lunar Cycle,” employs the idiom Once upon a time as its entry point. This small, well-worn turn of phrase operates as a springboard into …

Theory Of Care, Gabriella Ann Graceffo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

With a backdrop of the body and its inner forms, Theory of Care is a collection of poems and lyric excerpts that explores themes of queer sexuality, physical and mental health, etymology, desire, and physicality. It coheres moments of internal reckoning with an exploration of how trauma lives in the body, particularly the queer femme body. By accessing various landscapes including the medical sphere, family dynamics, and the social environments of the South, the collection grapples with different vernaculars to question how the language used to discuss (or dismiss) trauma dramatically alters the perception of those experiences.

Self-Saturated, Maja Holmquist

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Learning, identity, frame, emphasis. Self-saturated is a compilation of one woman’s life so far. In this collection of personal written works, I desaturate, wring out life and explore the drops left clinging in the wake of the initial flow. Vulnerable and open to scrutiny, these works are those drops, and how I’ve found myself able to articulate them. By no means an exhaustive or comprehensive look at my life, each reader will create an alternate version of me, the one they build with my words and from within their own life’s narrative.

No Other Gods, Hubble Stark

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Wet Specimen, Abigail Lee Raley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cystic fibrosis is a condition which thickens the mucus throughout the body of the afflicted patient. Bob Flanagan, in his book The Pain Journal, ventures to record that sort of physical experience, as it pertains to the daily practices of his art, leading up to his death. Flanagan expounds on given relationships between his sadomasochistic performance art and the pain of his body in his poem “Why.” Richard Siken, too, in his book Crush, explores the embodied violence of gay lust, love, and obsession. WET SPECIMEN finds itself amongst these traditions, as it ventures to explore the animality …

Cover, Title Page, Staff List, Editor's Note, Contents

The Oval

No abstract provided.

The Feminine Consumption, Reagan Hoffman

The Oval

No abstract provided.

Circulo Completo, Ben Sholar

The Oval

No abstract provided.

Wind In Wyoming, Emma Fisher

The Oval

No abstract provided.

Snowcapped Sunshine, Lindsay Hause

The Oval

No abstract provided.

The Beauty Of Autumn, Zachary Boggs

The Oval

No abstract provided.

A Meeting At The End, Austin Amestoy

The Oval

No abstract provided.

Sour, Caden Jordt

The Oval

No abstract provided.