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Bycatch, Terin Weinberg

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

BYCATCH

by

Terin Weinberg

Florida International University, 2021

Miami, Florida

Professor Denise Duhamel, Major Professor

BYCATCH is a collection of poems that explore the speaker’s relationship with the natural world. The poems utilize a variety of forms, from traditional sestinas and sonnets driven by image, to puzzle-pieced stereoscopes that can be read grammatically in three different ways—left to right, or down one of either columns. Though the collection is rooted in nature, the emotional drive is rooted in the construction and deconstruction of the family and the body. Each section of the book will function as …

A Second Universe, Emily A. Benson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A SECOND UNIVERSE is a memoir-in-essays that traces the author’s coming of age and her pursuit of self-discovery, belonging, and healing in all its forms. The book opens in the past, diving into the lives of the author’s parents before she was born and shedding light on the many obstacles they overcame to bring her earth-side. Set against the backdrop of the Southern Utah deserts and the clarity the author finds in the natural world, these essays wind through the author’s different childhood homes, down the lonely and desolate road of a sister’s addiction, and into the darkness that comes …

Asterisms, Erica N. Kenick

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ASTERISMS is a collection of lyric poetry that seeks to express a sense of awe for the natural world by exploring themes of science, art, and the self. By combining physics and metaphysics, scientific terminology and musings on love, ASTERISMS argues that these seemingly-disparate fields of knowledge can harmonize in unexpected ways.

In its style, the collection draws from the works of Dorianne Laux, Pablo Neruda, and Annie Dillard. Most of the poems are written in free-version and are tied together by images of astronomy and wilderness, both modern and prehistoric. Poems about classical music appear as interludes meant to …