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Follow The Shimmer, Meghan Bradbury

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Follow the Shimmer is a creative thesis collection of poems and songs that explore the depths of trauma, love, and healing. Told through the lens of fairy tale and fantasy, it is a story of grief and hope. Some of the tales are familiar, others are strange and abstract. Fables and nursery rhymes are remixed by the hands of a daughter who wishes for her deceased mother's touch. Archetypes and mythology are scrambled through the kaleidoscopic eyes of a woman who survives the violence of a patriarchal society. The world becomes a landscape of dangerous yet magical realms to discover; …

Visiting The Garden By Ryan Guptil, Ryan Guptil

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Visiting the Garden

Winter is gone
The sun is out

I open right up
I come right out.

My bright red complexion
My powerful aroma

Creatures come to see me,
Without a doubt.

They know my smell
They know my name

They know what I am
Not ever a doubt.

Every year I am the same,
But they always change.

Till next year my friends
Please stay the same.

I feel you looking
I never move, always still
Frozen like a rock.

I am as bright as a flame
And catch the shining sun.

You’re drawn to me
Like a …

Dandy/Robin/Gardener By Sadie Pressman, Sadie Pressman

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Dandy

I’ll be so direct by saying, if I may, that here is simply, absolutely, the best place to be. Here,
where the rolling hill plunges towards the ocean. Here, where the sight of the Bavarian blue sky
makes my insides feel endless. Here, where, watching as I so often do, as the white cotton
shape-shifts before my eyes, summer-time in suspense. The sun’s rays suspend from the sky,
dangling like the hands of time. They caress me. A pocket watch in the sky, the sky's the best
accessory. Here, where I am more popular than I could ever have …

A Short Stay By Rachel Milne, Rachel Milne

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

A Short Stay

Gracefully, she leaps over the fence.
Slowly, she walks through the yard,
Plucking low-hanging leaves for breakfast.
She lingers, as she eats
And suddenly –
Nails skittering on wood, a rush of air through the grass,
Her visit is cut short
She sends herself back into the woods
Just as the dog reaches the top of the hill

Their nest may be elsewhere,
But the pair frequently visit this place.
His little, crimson body darts over the yard,
Her subtle, tawny feathers hide away in a tree.
A constant in the garden,
They are a pleasant sight …

Floral Beauty By Sophia Squire, Sophia Squire

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Floral Beauty

An appreciation for chrysanthemum
Took bloom within her soul during
Her early years of life and began
To flourish as time went on

Passing slowly, the years whisked
By and things would grow all around
Her as her hair drifted down past
Her slim shoulders – long brown

“I wish to grow my roots, soon,
In one place where I can stay
Becoming stronger within myself
Until it is time for me to wither away

I’ll make this body a lovely space
For my spirit of flora to grow and
Thrive, with windows all around to
Let sunshine …

We, Three By Ginny Majka, Ginny Majka

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

We, Three

I am the soil, the mountains and oceans of life.
Mycellium colonies beneath my surface plunge up
up, up through the peat and the moss, the decaying leaves. They pray for the rain, the fruit of my earth.
Plantae nestle in, fragile and comfortable,
seeds sprout to eagerly gulp rain,
animalia flourish, consuming what I provide
only to come home, at the end, to me
to rejoin my earth;
we are one
I am the atmosphere, the sunny clouds and storms producing bounty to those below
I am the chaos in the lightning
I am the rainbow after …

Admirers Of The Garden By Tabitha Burgess, Tabitha Burgess

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Admirers of the Garden

I fly in as the sun rises
Fluttering to the beaming light
Of golden and red velvety petals
I touch down on the layers of the lilies
Admiring their similar colors
Breaking my concentration
A chirping sound in the distance

I feel the wind beneath my wings
As I fly to an area I’m familiar with
I land on the nearby fence post
My black and white feathers
Illuminated by sunlight
I look down at the nearby botany
The rows of greens growing from the soil
I seek out my next destination and take flight
As …

Visitors By Lindsey Bosk, Lindsey Bosk

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Visitors

There is a need within us all,
just like this garden,
for water to replenish what is dry and wilted.
One drop falls from the grey-blue sky onto a leaf.
Another hits my brow, I smile.
Like me, the rain does not stay forever,
we are both visitors here.

The droplets of water pick up speed,
as if sensing urgency.
Thirsty plants lap up water,
the rain is welcome.

Unlike the rain, I serve no purpose.
I quench no one’s thirst.
Nonetheless, I sit in the center of it all,
as If I matter most.

Ilja By Paula Shevenell, Paula Shevenell

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

ILJA

I remember you
sitting in the woods,
Gathering in the children
Gathering in the
sights and sounds.
You’re expression
warm, kind patient
as the children crawl over you.

I remember
Sitting on this rock
breathing in the scent of the woods
Trying to bring in
the calm I see in you
Amid the chaos
Of children befriending you
Of parents attempting
To capture the moment
With their devices
Of plastic, wires and glass.

Three Garden Visitors By Vivien Russe, Vivien Russe

ART/RSP 299: Gathering in the Garden: Poetry and Studio Art

Three Garden Visitors

Beside a cup of tea, I am a spotted leopard on pajamas.
Outside in the garden, this early summer morning,
Staying sly, quiet, not wanting to draw any attention from the neighbors.

A birdie is hidden in the Emerald Green Arborvitae,
After lunch, Owen comes over, asking politely if he can come into the yard to find it.
I reply, “Certainly, you can retrieve anything that lands in the yard without asking”.

Coming unannounced, no matter when, full of presumption
It comes with the lightest, gentle touch or the hardest hit, knocking flowers off center.
Below the …

Bones I Found In The Garden, Alena Indigo Anne Sullivan

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

This collection is a volume of small, intimate moments portrayed in both poetry and prose. Rather than grand, operatic plots telling convoluted stories, this work speaks of the magic in simple things, looking in at personal (and often difficult) moments—the process of finding the beauty in ugly things, finding the crumbs of human emotion that slip through the cracks—lending them the attention they are due but often fail to receive. This collection digs up potsherds of childhood trauma, bones of old romances, and ghosts of things that will never be, all presented to the reader through the lens of fantasy. …

Crisis Across The Dog-Starred Verse: Tales Of Heroism, Horror, And Apocalypse, David Arroyo

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Crisis Across the Dog-Starred Verse: Tales of Heroism, Horror, and Apocalypse is a collection of formal and free-verse poems. Although a few pieces are confessional in nature, many of the poems borrow from the genres of speculative fiction: horror and science fiction specifically. The thesis is not divided into sections, rather it alternates visions of a confessional real world and fantasy space. Many poems cover the death of my dog and our adventures in the multiverse, while others like “Together We Are Monsters” are meditations on monsters and pornography. Two longer pieces, however, “Campus of the 21st Century,” and “The …

Gen Ms 31 Thomas Carper Papers Finding Aid, Megan Hendrix

Search the General Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Description:

This collection contains poems, writing logs and published works of poet Thomas Carper. Originally from Cornish, Maine, Carper is a Professor Emeritus who taught poetry and creative writing at USM from 1967 to 1997 and currently divides his time between Maine and France. The Papers include multiple drafts showing revisions of the poem along with the final version.

Date Range:

1982-2007

Size of Collection:

2 ft

Fire In The Garden, Troy A. Myers Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Fire in the Garden is a collection of poems primarily confessional in nature that deal with changes during mid-life: moving to a new house, having a son go to college and the subsequent abandonment of the marriage by one partner. The biographical experiences are often accompanied by landscape details taken from the garden and yard of the new house where the speaker lives.

Gen Ms 01 Katharine E. O’Brien Papers Finding Aid, Susie R. Bock

Search the General Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Description:

Katharine E. O’Brien (d. 1998) was raised in Portland, Maine. She taught mathematics for more than 30 years at Deering High School in Portland, of which she was an alumna, and was a published poet. The Papers includes typescripts of her poems, correspondence, photographs, and miscellany.

Date Range:

1947-1998

Size of Collection:

1 ft.

Maine: Poets' Corner Of America, Carl Jefferson Weber

Maine Collection

Maine: Poets' Corner of America

Compiled by Carl Jefferson Weber (1894-1966), formerly Professor of English, Colby College. 1957?

"Maine has always been a fertile seedbed for authors. The following pages will help you to visit the scenes, houses, and regions which these authors have made famous."

Published and distributed by the Department of Economic Development under Appropriation No. 3920.

Down East Ballads, Silas H. Perkins

Maine Collection

Down East Ballads

by Silas H. Perkins, Illustrated by Louis D. Norton

Privately Published, Kennebunkport, Maine, 1927.

To Arms! Songs Of The Great War, Laura E. Richards

Maine Collection

To Arms! Songs of the Great War

by Laura E. Richards

The Page Company, Boston, Mass., 1918.

"First Impression, December, 1917."

The Colonial Press, C.H. Simonds Co., Boston, U.S.A.