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Romeo Bones, Ron Paul Salutsky
Romeo Bones, Ron Paul Salutsky
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Romeo Bones is a collection of verse exclusively composed while the poet was a graduate student in the Creative Writing International Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The manuscript has three primary divisions---and two intercalary---which respectively confront otherness, subjectivity, and past/present self, each not to exclude the others' resonance.
The Three Saras, Peter Golub
The Three Saras, Peter Golub
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
There are two important foundations upon which my poetry stands: (1) Epistemologically I am an empiricist, not a realist; (2) my poetry is not empirical. That is, it operates in the realm of the thought experiment --the laboratory of the mind. This demon is a good analogy to how I write poetry. I usually get the urge to write a poem after thinking about a question, or a fact. In Maxwell's gedankenexperiment the fact is the second law of thermodynamics, and the question is: What if a demon partitioned the fast and slow molecules in a box?;Hence, there is this …
Poppe Culture, Jaq Greenspon
Poppe Culture, Jaq Greenspon
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
We open in Venice Beach, with the hung-over Skids Poppe (30's). Skids, a former biker, is now a cult journalist for a variety of magazines. He still retains his dubious friends, one of which, Guantanamo Bey (30's), is an ex-military loafer who's sleeping on Skids' floor. Skids refers to Guantanamo as his "faithful sidekick." So, when another old friend, Bernie, calls Skids up and says he needs help, Skids and Guantanamo figure they'll get a free breakfast out of it at their favorite hang-out, the Sidewalk Cafe, a Venice Beach landmark; Skids says he knows better, but he still agrees …
This History Of Small Things, Paul Sacksteder
This History Of Small Things, Paul Sacksteder
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
The poems in this thesis seek to explore the notion of uncertainty in terms of its value as both an intellectual and political position. Uncertainty is echoed both in subject matter and form. It serves not as a tool of conservatism, but as an opportunity towards empathy and expansion in a narrowing world; Ecology also plays a prominent role in both the poetry as well as the development of uncertainty and sustainability. The poems seek to broaden conceptions of ecology by drawing often disparate objects and concepts in proximity. These poems then exist in the anxiety of trying to understand …
Lake Affect: A Novel Excerpt And Other Stories, Perry Sundberg
Lake Affect: A Novel Excerpt And Other Stories, Perry Sundberg
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
As part of the degree requirement for an MFA in Creative writing I am submitting an unpublished, original collection of short stories and a novel excerpt as my thesis. These stories are meant to encapsulate the feelings of need and confusion, the desire for understanding and acceptance, and ultimately the finality and the sometimes futility of life. These stories are meant to infuse the reader with feelings of both joy and despair, but never with passive acceptance. The title story, Lake Affect, is best described as an excerpt from a novel in progress. This portion of the novel should stand …
It's Just A Stage I'M Going Through: The Rhetorical Effects Of Musical Theater, Thomas A Moilanen
It's Just A Stage I'M Going Through: The Rhetorical Effects Of Musical Theater, Thomas A Moilanen
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Human communication is often thought of in rather limited terms, such as rhetoric or media effects or interpersonal exchanges. While many sub-groups lurk beneath these broad categorical trench coats, forms of artistic expression such as music, theater and humor find themselves in other intellectual clothing; yet, it is undeniable that most---if not all---human endeavors can be viewed through a communicative lens. Other disciplines are obviously worthy in their own right and contain enough distinct characteristics to keep scholars from exploring additional contexts, but why limit the study of music to the music department? Or the study of Literature to the …
Manifest Destiny, John Nardone
Manifest Destiny, John Nardone
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
In order to complete the University of Nevada Las Vegas English Department's Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree, a student must complete 54 hours of graduate course work related to creative writing, literature, and international study. In addition, the student is expected to devote 12 credit hours to a culminating work of publishable quality. To fulfill the requirements of my MFA Thesis, I am composing a novel entitled, " Manifest Destiny.";The novel, as indicated in the title, is meant to intuit a commentary on the westward migration of European settlers in the United States. The main character, Dominic …
Unreal City: Short Story Collection, Kelle Schillaci
Unreal City: Short Story Collection, Kelle Schillaci
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
I adopted the title of this short story collection after viewing the work of Italian sculptor Mario Merz, who, in turn, borrowed the phrase from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. I first saw Merz' "Unreal City" structure at the Guggenheim in Bilbao during the summer of 2006, while traveling through Spanish Basque country. Merz, an integral artist within Italy's Arte Povera art movement (and outspoken anti-Fascist political figure), utilized cheap, industrial materials---or "found" materials---when constructing his igloo structures, emphasizing the temporal nature of their very existence. Designed as an extended metaphor for the life of an artist, the structure itself …
The Execution Of Fluffy And Other Stories From Las Vegas, Bliss Esposito
The Execution Of Fluffy And Other Stories From Las Vegas, Bliss Esposito
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
My MFA Thesis is a collection of six, linked short stories centering on a particular family who lives in Las Vegas. The stories span several decades, from the sixties to present day. They are based around the struggles of the family, both as individuals and as a unit, to overcome the unique problems of living in a city that is isolated yet filled with possibilities; The central figure is Tommy, the patriarch, who came to Las Vegas as a young man looking to make a name for himself. He has a knack for getting into trouble, but has a greater …
Talking To Strangers: Stories, Heather Ann Jacobs
Talking To Strangers: Stories, Heather Ann Jacobs
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
The stories in this manuscript are united by the mystery of human relationships and our often fragile connection to others. "A Father's Story" reveals what happens when a father and daughter are at odds politically. "The Box" explores a woman's search for self in an outgrown relationship. Through glimpses into a scientist's life at different ages, "Drift" tells of his attempt to comprehend the bizarre life of the deep sea and of his dark family history. " Tropiezo" is told from the perspective of a young Mexican woman who comes to question her position in life through a seemingly insignificant …
Scenic America: This Is A Test Poems, Rachael Sullivan
Scenic America: This Is A Test Poems, Rachael Sullivan
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
The stilled moment of a photograph is a type of promise---which we believe because we see---that time cannot be stopped. In this series of poems, I have tried to confront a stilled moment, discarded object, or fragment of a past, and I have found this confrontation readily sparked in an ekphrasis of photography. Etymologically, "ekphrasis" means to call out (or describe) an object, traditionally an art object. However, ekphrasis as a literary genre has attracted much critical interest, complicating the term's definition. I employ an ekphrasis of dialogue, hoping to reach beyond both the poem and ekphrastic object. Given this …
Building The Ark, Jessica Kruse
Building The Ark, Jessica Kruse
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Building the Ark is a reference to the Biblical story of Noah's and the Ark. I became fascinated with this story a few years ago after realizing that, like many females mentioned in the Bible, the wife of Noah has no name and is simply a peripheral figure. This title poem, which attempts to uncover the story of a modern-day nameless wife of Noah, soon became central to the focus of the entire manuscript. Like the title poem, the manuscript as a whole focuses on physical and emotional displacement, with an emphasis on the search for a geographical and psychological …
A Diagram Of The Whole New World, Caleb D Mammen
A Diagram Of The Whole New World, Caleb D Mammen
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
My creative thesis, a diagram of the whole new world, is a book of poems that explores and discovers what it means to write in a native tongue and also what it means to lose nativity all together. Travel is a treated theme, literally, as most of the poems were written across the world, as well as metaphysically, in the sense of making and erasing new boundaries of perception; Each poem aims to exhibit its own form as it itself is made. So, I have not written them in the shadow of any particular formal constraint(s). Rather, I have borrowed …
What Are Friends For?, David Eric Surratt
What Are Friends For?, David Eric Surratt
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
As social beings, nearly all of us find that the development of individual identity requires an acceptance of others' influence, whether good or had. The specifics of self-concept, as we typically understand the term, can only exist relative to one's perceptions of outside selves, in all their likeness and, more importantly, dissimilarity to our own. To know what we are is to know what we are not; These eight, highly disparate works of short fiction all seek, in some way, to describe the evolution of individual identity that results when separate paths cross, with a broad emphasis on the by-products …
Crackdown, Heather Winterer
Crackdown, Heather Winterer
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
The poems of Crackdown follow the progress of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola written in the 16th century. Like the Exercises, the poems are divided into sections which correspond to the week on sin and reform ("Translations/Valley of the Shadow'), the week on the life of Christ ("Translations/The Call of the Temporal King"), the week on the Passion ("Translations/Crackdown"), and the week on the Resurrection ("Translations/Apparition"). The work is framed by "Translations/An Approach" which acknowledges the Anima Christi prayer at the beginning of the Exercises as an embedded acrostic; Each section begins with a prayer and several preludes …
In The Archives, Christopher Arigo
In The Archives, Christopher Arigo
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
My second collection of poetry, In the archives represents a bridge between my first collection of poems, Lit interim, and my newest, Myths and miscellany. In In the archives, the central metaphor is that of the archives: which can be a metaphor for memory, for how we store and organize knowledge, a metaphor for the place where poetry is made. In this collection, my concerns with formal characteristics of the poems is beginning to fade, though there are still remnants of such concerns, particularly in the serial poem, "Tracking sites," whose location on the page is determined by the dominant …
A Gold-Colored Background (English With Czech Accent), Mandy Alyse Kalish
A Gold-Colored Background (English With Czech Accent), Mandy Alyse Kalish
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
As part of the degree requirement for an MFA in Creative Writing I am submitting an unpublished, original novel as my thesis. The novel is a first-person narrative of a woman from the Czech Republic. As the story develops, Data, the main character, comes to Las Vegas with her husband. The two eventually win a large jackpot, at which point the husband dies of heart failure and Zlata inherits all of the winnings. She stays in Las Vegas and eventually teams up with a tiny busboy to design and open her own hotel/casino on the strip. This novel is meant …
Loose Slots: Imaginations Of The American Demos, Jessica Frances Thomas
Loose Slots: Imaginations Of The American Demos, Jessica Frances Thomas
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Millions of Americans are subject to television programs about Las Vegas through shows such as CSI and Las Vegas, but there is little fictionalized writing done about this city, and only a small percentage of that takes place off the Strip. Since the publication of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , there has yet to another pop literary examination of Las Vegas as a cultural contributor to the American experience. Partially because of the fluid nature of the city, its ability to shape-shift within a decade, and partially because it is so difficult to avoid the …
Donning The White Agbada, Abayomi Animashaun
Donning The White Agbada, Abayomi Animashaun
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
No poet, Eliot says, makes art alone by himself; he works with the collection of the dead and living poets around him. It is with this in mind that I have put together this poetry collection, Donning the White Agbada, in honor of William Stafford. Although the collection is dedicated to Mr. Stafford, it is not limited to him; it draws freely and extensively from different writers, different materials, and different periods---from the Christian Bible, to Robert Frost, to Sophocles, to Nigerian History, and to Yoruba mythology, among others. So that what is created (in my ongoing exploration of Western …
Electric Banana, Mongolian Sky, Stacey Abbott
Electric Banana, Mongolian Sky, Stacey Abbott
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Although these poems stretch from Las Vegas to Mongolia---two peculiar and exotic places---and a few points in between, they remain tethered to the quotidian of life. They illustrate familiar details of the human experience such as love, learning, distance, and change. The poems of Electric Banana, Mongolian Sky aim to, as William Wordsworth states in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads: choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, as far as [is] possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and at the same time to throw over them a certain coloring of …
Permanent Record, Jonathan Bauch
Permanent Record, Jonathan Bauch
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Permanent Record is a collection of loosely connected short stories, told primarily in the first person (framed by a prologue and epilogue in other points of view), taking place on Staten Island; New York, during the 1980s. Tracing the character's development from his bar mitzvah through college, the stories deal primarily with a young man's attempt to reconcile his feelings of rebellion---against his parents, teachers, tradition, etc.---with his growing awareness of the Judaism instilled in him as a child. As much as the character tries to distance himself from his parents and their religious values, he becomes increasingly aware how …
No Fine End For A Modern Day Alice In Transit, Lisa Brooks Markowitz
No Fine End For A Modern Day Alice In Transit, Lisa Brooks Markowitz
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
To the reader---; How I live is a giant writing thing, even when I'm not writing. There is always breath, both shallow and deep, and somewhere, wet jackets, sides of the same world. It is about the blob, mostly because all of this has been written and said but for the ghost that follows me around. What matters most finds us when we are open, the way a flower opens up for the Sun I write because I don't have a choice, the way Alice had to go through Wonderland before she could get out. What is left, having left …
Answers The Dog Whispered, Allison Marie Wilkins
Answers The Dog Whispered, Allison Marie Wilkins
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
A woman writing must learn to fuse all of her identities in order to be true to herself and her writing. She must think about the issues that affect all women, and then she must decide how to handle them herself. These issues are what make up the body of poetry in "Answers the Dog Whispered". The poems are about answering the questions that life asks of a woman; The poems range in topic from motherhood to grief, erotic love to family, relationships to writing. Their common unifying theme is a strong woman's voice that pushes the boundaries between the …
Jesus' Shadow, Meredith Lee Stewart
Jesus' Shadow, Meredith Lee Stewart
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
The poems in this collection are mainly drawn from personal experience, especially the experience of place as seen through the perspective of the "I." Many of the poems have overtly spiritual themes. I envision even those poems that aren't overtly spiritual as being prayer-like because both prayer and poetry require a connection to something outside the self as well as deep honesty about the self; There are some poems in this collection that are inspired mainly by research rather than personal experience. I focused much of this research on women's issues and bringing to light women who have been overlooked …
"33", Caleb Brooks
"33", Caleb Brooks
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
"33" is a collection of poetry divided into three sections. The poems in the first section, Cycle, represent twelve "snapshots" of a year in a relationship. The names are Native American names for full moons within each of the twelve months. The initial poem in the series is a traditional invocation, this one to the god of Love The second section is less thematically grouped, however I feel that for the most part they do fit the tone and thematic intent of the work. That section is entitled Pompeii of Love after one of the poems contained therein. The final …
The Lyric Subject, Matthew Shears
The Lyric Subject, Matthew Shears
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
The ensuing creative dissertation operates, essentially, as a book of poems. As such, it demonstrates my most up to date engagement with poetry and poetics, although many poems have been discarded during my stay at UNLV. One of the weaknesses of my outlook on poetry as I entered school here was the hodgepodge of received opinions which, when mixed with a kind of individualized vision of writing, operated in place of "theory," and under the sign of "poetics." In short, what I most needed to develop was some sort of critical/theoretical apparatus, in terms of reading and writing; But poets …
The Other Country: Stories And A Novella, Vu Hoang Tran
The Other Country: Stories And A Novella, Vu Hoang Tran
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
The Other Country is a collection of seven short stories and a novella, all of which take place in Saigon and the Saigon area and portray the lives of its citizens in contemporary Vietnam. Given the country's recent history, this setting inevitably evokes the Vietnam War, a connection that casts the book---especially from the American perspective---into the shadow of contemporary American fiction that focuses on the war both as a historical experience and as a cultural idea: important novels like Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story, and …
Glean: Poems, Joshua Peter Kryah
Glean: Poems, Joshua Peter Kryah
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Glean, a reference to the gathering of grain after harvest, explores the appalling trust implicit in any act of faith---that prayer may not elicit a response. Spare and evocative, the collection struggles with a language at odds with itself. How do we write about an absence that can never be fully possessed or known, an absence that may be all we ever glimpse of the divine? When does spirituality become more real than its pursuit? Moving between doubt and vulnerability, the body and its unresolved spiritual fate, Glean dedicates itself to the exploration of faith, simultaneously investigating the possibility of …
Wake Up The Family, Katherine Lien Chariott
Wake Up The Family, Katherine Lien Chariott
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
WAKE UP THE FAMILY is a collection of short stories, set in contemporary Las Vegas. These stories share more than a geographic setting; they share common concerns of loneliness, loss, alienation, and illness. The stories are further linked by the repetition (across multiple narratives) of plotlines, images, phrases, and key words. The links between these stories---thematic and otherwise---are meant to encourage a reading of the collection as one extended work of fiction, rather than as a group of separate works. It is hoped that these links will lead the reader to interpret each story in terms of the other (related) …
Birds In Paradise, Constance Ford
Birds In Paradise, Constance Ford
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations
Birds in Paradise is a novel telling the story of a teenage girl in Idaho who is seduced into leaving her troubled home life with her parents to live with a passionate and charismatic religious zealot in his house on the banks of the Snake River. The main character, Janice Evans, has recently moved to the small town of Meade, Idaho, in the wake of an event in her family---her father has had an affair and has left his university teaching position to start over in this conservative, rural town. Her parents' marriage continues on, full of turmoil and anger, …