Arts and Humanities Commons^™

There Could Be Light Here, Audrey Bowers

Graduate Thesis Collection

Poems about healing and hurting. The journey begins with a 14-year-old who is struggling with suicidal thoughts and ends with a 25-year-old learning how to live with bipolar 1 disorder. The poems focus on finding light in the darkness, one poem at a time.

My Body Is A Question Mark Lit From Within, Lisa Marie Schrad

Graduate Thesis Collection

In her MFA thesis “My Body Is a Question Mark Lit from Within,” Lisa Marie Schrad explores through poetry the body and its different appetites—hunger for justice, for healing, for God, for home, for wonder. Along the way, the poems also make clear that the path toward fullness and satisfaction must inevitably pass through a deep, brave commitment to knowing the full truth about ourselves. When a light shines out from inside the body, what shortcomings are exposed? What goodness is revealed? And how do we live in the world responsibly, kindly, from the space in-between our questions and their …

What We Need: A Poetic Study In Struggle And Self-Healing, Grace Anne Calabria

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In many ways, this thesis examines the eternal, repetitive inevitabilities of life. In a collection of poems, these inevitabilities are examined through the eyes of an observant and omniscient narrator: a girl, long in love with a boy, facing the struggles and rewards of learning to be alone in various ways after the 2020 pandemic. Because this thesis provides an examination of struggles and self-healing alongside its creative centerpiece of the collection, the poems are accompanied by a compilation of memoiristic reflections. This thesis contributes to conversations of mental health, love, growth, and finding legitimacy and value in creative work, …

When Poetry And Humor Get Hitched, Christian Hartselle

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Through humor, poetry explores the imagination and the mind just as it does through other means of expression. Comic poetry finds the truth in the illogical and in the absurd; it finds what unsettles us through its use of surprise; it finds delight and play in the unknown and uncertain. By its very nature, comic poetry clings to the edges of what we know, so pinpointing its characteristics is tricky. But the shared characteristic of all comic poetry is the permission the poet grants herself to disobey boundaries. The poet chooses not to fit her works within the reader’s expectations, …

Sky Lifting His Skirts, Thaddeus Harmon

Graduate Thesis Collection

An imbecilic invocation uttered by glass-fingered mannequins jaggedly gesticulating forgotten ballet moves in a future where skin is optional, and computers sneeze.

White Shadows: Perception And Imagination In Poetry, Madison Chartier

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In the spring of my sophomore year, I enrolled in the introductory course to writing poetry here at Butler University. I am not naturally a poet, but I have an appreciation for reading poetry and, at the time of the course, was curious to try my hand at the craft, despite having had little experience prior to the collegiate level. As may be expected, I ran into obstacles.

I enjoyed playing with language in experiments of sound and rhythm, but, despite the vast array of assonance, consonance, enjambment, and every other technique I employed, the poems I created throughout the …

The Religious Imagery In Emily Dickinson's Love Poems, Constance B. Kirby

Graduate Thesis Collection

This paper will discuss to what extent Emily Dickinson's heritage, environment, and experience formed her attitudes on religion and love, and will explain how successful she was in translating her intense emotional experience of love into poetry by examining her use of religious imagery.

A Study Of Edwin Arlington Robinson With Special Attention To His Shorter Poems, Lucile Willowby

Graduate Thesis Collection

The purpose of the present study is to ascertain the principles of poetry to which Robinson adhers, to determine his position in relation to the imagists, and to discuss in some detail the technical qualities of his shorter poems.

Imagery In The Poetry Of Langston Hughes, Maple Louise Allen

Graduate Thesis Collection

Now, it is the purpose of this dissertation to present a study of the imagery in the poetry of Langston Hughes with special emphasis upon (1) its sources, (2) its types, (3) its functions, and, (4) its imprtance as a factor in evaluating Hughes' poetic contributions to society.