Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Offshore, Laurel Nakanishi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

OFFSHORE is a collection of lyric essays that examines the intersections between human cultures and the natural world. The essays inspect issues of identity and belonging in different geographic, cultural, and political landscapes. Part one of the book centers on the cultural and natural landscapes of Hawaii and Japan. Part two explores interpersonal relationships in Montana. And part three focuses on social justice issues in Nicaragua and Florida. Each of the essays in this collection balances intellectual exploration with personal narrative and poetic description, allowing the essays to be simultaneously concept-driven while maintaining lyric force.

Balm Of Gilead, Michael Martin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

BALM OF GILEAD is a collection of poetry that explores the speaker’s rediscovery of love and spiritual meaning in the years after his recovery from addiction and the loss of a parent. BALM OF GILEAD fits within the English poetic tradition of fastening ineffable sacred experience into more personal lyric modes, an inheritance dating not only to the works of John Donne, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but to the Psalms of David. The often-confessional poems in BALM OF GILEAD borrow from the free verse and emotional urgency of Denis Johnson; the broken sonnets of Molly Peacock; and the …

Adhans & Orgasms, Emily Jalloul

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ADHANS & ORGASMS is a collection that includes both free verse and prose poetry. The poems shape the Florida landscape as well as cultural aspects of the speaker’s home life, providing insight to the hyphenated space between Arab and American societies. The frequent use of the female perspective and humor inform the speaker of her own past, while portraying a woman at odds with a patriarchal society.

Many of the poems explore the self through pop-culture, sexuality, and heritage. ADHANS & ORGASMS discusses the family unit’s dysfunction as it tries to bridge cultures. Romantic relationships are examined, and many of …

All My Heroes Are Broke, Ariel F. Henriquez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ALL MY HEROES ARE BROKE is a poetry collection written from the perspective of a first generation American coming to terms with the implicit struggles and disillusionment of the American Dream. The first section takes place in New York, both implicitly and explicitly, and serves to introduce the speaker and reveal aspects of his family’s history. The second section takes place in Florida, and continues to further exemplify the speaker’s growing cynicism towards the circumstances of his life, and the peculiar atmosphere of solitude that it creates.

ALL MY HEROES ARE BROKE primarily uses two forms: short, image driven poems …

Rubble & Honey, Megan J. Arlett

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

RUBBLE & HONEY is a collection of poems unified by its use of language driven lyricism to recount personal narratives in the life of the poet. The poems in this manuscript depict the landscapes of California, Florida, Mississippi, the South Downs of England, and Anglesey off the northwest coast of Wales. The manuscript engages with these physical spaces, how the speaker reacts to the natural world and how these locations can reflect the internal. The collection is broken into four sections: the first two explore parting, firstly from a relationship and then revisiting the poet’s childhood landscape of Sussex, England; …