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Communion Anthropoid, Joshua Stanek

Dissertations and Theses

In National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation, a man of good will offers all he has to a dear brother-in-law--recognizing the snakes he keeps as toys, the camper, the stones, dirt, and arid shrubbery are likewise dear to him. They go out to the desert at night and dig shallow holes, seemingly at random. Their imprecision is surprisingly fruitful. Imagine the constellation they made for the stars. In Communion Anthropoid, I am digging shallow holes in the dark with a mind to unearth what I believe I have lost. The dearness, I suppose. These poems vary in form from eight …

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Disaster And Hope In The Comic Universe Of 'Gardening In The Tropics', Molly Mosher

Dissertations and Theses

In this paper, I explore ideas of dominion and how Western canon has helped propagate ideas of human domination of the natural world. Using Joseph W. Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival, I trace a line from the advent of the literary tragedy to the climate crisis. To contrast, I use his idea of comedy as the antidote to domination — a way of thinking that might inspire collaboration with the natural world. I will explore the comic with, predominately, Olive Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, alongside Jamaica Kincaid’s gardening studies and Mona Lisa Saloy’s essay on environmental destruction. To …

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Lighter Than I Remember, Shane Hayden

Dissertations and Theses

It is pointless to track one's progress along the energies of the cosmic sea, when independent of the immensely malleable sonic waves, and erase the cessation of elevation. The release never reaches the essence and the static repels them when they are devoid of the white dwarfs or their spiral arms: there is nothing tangible in not exploiting the mind/body connection. At last the summit is exalted. Miniscule solar rays expand into darkness, unhinged and must be nurtured, thought by thought, until magnified in nerve impulse and then put to rest by the still water, thus more quickly compiled, constricted …

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