Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Four Junes, Sara Brown

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Four Junes is a poetry collection of elegies and pastoral elegies that aims to discuss and explore the interconnectedness of the body within the frame of health and illness to the landscape of long-term and short-term dwelling and ideas of home. Through fractured frames of home oppositional in landscape and environment, the collection discusses how the body functions and exists in health and unhealth and explores the reactions and processing of half-deaths involved in cancer, and specifically, stem cell transplants as treatment for terminal illnesses. More specifically, the cancerous body and healthy body are contrasted to one another and considered …

Monumentalizing A Political Candidacy: Robert Lowell And Eugene Mccarthy’S History, Jeremy Freeman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

History (1973) remains Robert Lowell’s most criticized collection of poetry. This was largely because of the critical consensus that Lowell, the most well-known confessional poet, had moved too far away from the elements of the genre in his later works. This reception, coupled with his public mental health episodes, highly publicized divorce from Elizabeth Hardwick in 1972, and personal politics, had a negative impact on the legacy of the author. In revisiting this work, I argue that Lowell’s History is just as confessional as his earlier collections but presents the confessional mode in a different way. In doing so, Lowell …

Belt Of Pearls, Danielle Lee Henry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Belt of Pearls is a collection of poems concerned with the idea of home in both places and in

people. The speaker wrestles with dissatisfaction with home as a place of origin. The ties of

family, familiar landmarks, and old relationships are outgrown; the feeling of belonging becomes

associated with a lover instead. The poems attempt to locate relationships in geographical scenes

largely through the language of weather and flora. Images of light and the way it strikes a scene

are particularly important. Influences of the collection include Robert Hass, Tracy K. Smith, and

Deborah Landau.

Table Of The Sun, Christine Bettis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My creative thesis is a 48-page collection of poems titled Table of the Sun. Each poem is an intimate interrogation of varied ecological, romantic, and/or political disasters ranging from the Dakota Access Pipeline, cruel love, and Donald Trump. Some poems are reckonings, and others work to heal trauma, heartache, clinical illness, and supernatural afflictions like those experienced by the Tarantati of Puglia. Some are combative, it's true. Water is everywhere and it is multitudinous as an agent of destruction, cleansing, and transformation, and as a life-giver. The collection was influenced by readings, lectures, and courses I've experienced at UNLV, including …

Seers In Greensand, Michael Lawrence Berger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis on poetry has culminated in a poetry manuscript of 60 pages in length. Many of the poems in this manuscript are inspired by my experiences studying English poetry and literature in this program, with a particular emphasis on devotional and spiritual poetry and poetics. A third of my thesis poem, in fact, came out of my experiences fulfilling the “study abroad” requirement in my MFA. To fulfill that requirement, I embarked on a couple pilgrimage walks through rural parts of the United Kingdom. The longest walk was the one I took from …

Tearing Up The Tallgrass, Brett Salsbury

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This creative thesis project is a culmination of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree at UNLV. The thesis—currently titled Tearing up the Tallgrass—was composed entirely during my graduate semesters at UNLV. As a book of poetry, it explores the dynamics of humans in nature, white privilege, objectivity, fact- and myth-making, and artistic practice. Written under the supervision of Claudia Keelan (committee chair) and Donald Revell (committee member), my committee further includes P. Jane Hafen (English) and Pierre Lienard (Anthropology). Their disparate subject and genre interests are meant to diversify the feedback received during this project’s composition. Some …

Transplants, Denise Weber

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

transplants is a body of poetry that joys in migration and grafting; in change and self-destruction; in cycles of survival and death; in resurrection and reincarnation. In this collection, I write of saints and prophets as regular people, faulted and accessible, transposed into the landscapes I’ve inhabited: from the deserts of Las Vegas and Mesa Verde in the U.S. to the coasts and jungles of Belize and Costa Rica in Central America. Through their eyes, one may find the profound within things overlooked, and the vulnerability of our mortal condition. transplants draws on not only stolen and transformed identities, but …

Multiplicity, Marianne Leslie Chan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This manuscript, Multiplicity, is a collection of poems that addresses the varying dimensions within human interactions and the multiple nature of the self. The speakers in these poems confront the “arbitrary constraints” and the categories that define our identities, as well as how these categories are almost always blurred by the complexities of the self and the differences between people. These categories include gender, sexuality, ethnicity, siblinghood, daughterhood, and religion. Two of these poems— “Really, It is All Arbitrary Constraint” and “Other Stories,” which appear in the second section—attempt to dismantle these constraints and/or categories by breaking from traditional poetic …

All Is Ripe For Fire, Dana Marie Killmeyer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

All is Ripe for Fire is a two-part lyrical meditation that captures the world of the unnamed speaker who is visited by the image of a woman, such as the one who appears in the very first poem, "The Unnamed," which begins with an invitation to reader: "Let us look at the French woman's hand touching the flame to her sleeve." However, no sooner is the reader's attention drawn to the woman's hand, the flame, and then to her sleeve, than the image of the woman is gone entirely. In a matter of a few words, the figure of the …

One Way To Light A Candle, Samantha Samson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following collection of poems represents three years of creative work in the Masters of Fine Arts-Poetry program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Meeting at the intersection of both Jewish and Queer identities, the manuscript is united by the recurring image of a candle. Candles are lit on a wide variety of Jewish occasions, from the Sabbath to the anniversary of a family member's death. They serve as a constant reminder of God's divine presence. In Jewish tradition, candles also represent the human soul, the flame reminding us of the beauty and frailty of life. Proverbs 20:27 states, …

Maps On The Backs Of Our Eyes, Joan Paulette Robinson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A collection of poems related to places in the Mojave Desert and the Las Vegas area or in rural central Michigan. Most poems deal with history and memory and the overlapping nature of experience.

There Are Moments That Hang Suspended, Mark B. Lennon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project is the culmination of ten years of work in poetry. It was begun in imitation of those who impressed, not only with their fine words and dexterity with language, but also with their clear conviction in their subject material. Reflected in the works of Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, and Adrienne Rich, among others, was evidence of a life lived, in Thoreau's term, deliberately. The writing of poetry seemed to be not simply a means of expression, but a goad to live a life worth examining, and to keep doing so; a progress report for a radical mind.

Politics …

Strange Little Vehicles, Andrew Merecicky

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

It isn't an exploration in or an experiment regarding. It is a praxis, as a commute is the opposite of an adventure. As le chat regarde le poisson. As when one looks at anything, it becomes strange. That is, a thing (a thought, a feeling, Gertrude Stein's "piece of coffee") once considered becomes little and different. It is the world that is large and alike. It is ultimately the similarity, the recognition of which we, who feel small and unique in the grand scheme, find terrifying. Language is always, as Lyn Hejinian wrote, social; it is a vehicle.

As I …

In What Array That They They Were In And Participating Godlike Food, Thomas Jackson Wills

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I am submitting two manuscripts for my creative dissertation, In What Array That They Were In and Participating Godlike Food. The former is a sequence of odes followed by a brief epic, followed by a cycle of verse dramas, with an ode epilogue. The latter is a book-length excerpt from an epic poem/crime novel/Menippean satire/television show/Dada collage/historical document/vatic investigation that comes in 20 page sections that are supposed to approximate the 42 minutes of an average crime show.

Samsara, Erica Anzalone

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In Samsara, I bring a spiritual-historical lens to art, war, feminism, religion, and the body in extremis. Although the word samsara resonates mostly within the Hindu and Buddhist faiths, meaning literally to wander through the rounds of death and rebirth, my poetics of transience and trauma crosses cultures, including Muslim, Christian, and Judaic notions of spirituality. Bosnia, Iowa, Boston, and Prague are all shifting sands within the mandala-like hourglass of this collection. My voice often issues from a working class register and speaks with rebellious power from a place of powerlessness: "E-bay nirvana, you want me to yes sir/I'll get …

Always Away, Mollie Bergeron

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

At any given time, there are pages of notes and thoughts running through our minds; these have to come out in some way. In order to stay sane, to stay human, I write poems. These poems are interested in breath and space, memory and nostalgia, loss and water. Each of these ideas has its own fit as part of the poem as well as part of life and being alive. Human emotion is varied through these. Observation and perception, turned into poems through the very physical act of putting words onto a page, allow these memories and experiences to live …

Pyramid Of The Sun, James Joseph Brown

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Pyramid of the Sun is a novel which is experimental in structure. It weaves traditional prose with original poems based on Aztec creation myths. The narrative is not strictly linear, but approaches the plot from several angles - past, present, and future - simultaneously. It comes back to its starting point at the end, like a snake devouring its own tail. The novel takes the Aztec and Mayan belief that time is circular and never-ending and reinterprets it in a contemporary, hard-edged setting that touches down at various points across the globe, including Moscow, Seville, Seoul and Las Vegas. Pyramid …

Due Partly To Inertia, Justin Lee Irizarry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the preface to Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman said, "The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit." My poetry aims to exist in Whitman's `kosmos' and in doing so advance through the turmoil and the strategies of certainty to something resembling principles. Politics is a common theme; it is not in an attempt to write political poetry, but an attempt to not leave anything out. Other themes throughout this manuscript include death, music, wanting, having, …

All Aboard The Succulent Wave, Oscar William Oswald

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

All Aboard the Succulent Wave is a collection of poems written over the past three years. It is the product of major shifts in my faith and trust in language. The manuscript is divided into three parts: "The Staccato Monsoon," "Today / / / A Poetics," and "Elliptics." Each of these sections concerns a particular theme about my language, my god, and my soul.

I wrote many poems that used language to find god. In these poems, those designated by "/ / / A Poetics," I write about what is holy to me in the moment and about how the …

Wobble, Said The Hedgehog, Mary Elder

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My thesis is called "Wobble, Said the Hedgehog." However, there are also things in it that are neither hedgehogs nor wobbly. These include, but are not limited to, the body, kingship, Catholicism, cats, mice, betrayal between friends, jam, alcohol, badgers, love and the military. There is less actual discussion of sex than one might expect. For the purposes of describing my project as an assembled whole, however, this prospectus will attempt to transcend "badgers" as a summary. (This is not to say that "badgers" isn't a useful signifier. It should be referred to almost as often as "Catholicism.")

II. Image …

Love Is Just A Word For The Last Body I'D Like To Keep Vigil Over, Robert Jagger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Love is Just a Word for the Last Body I'd Like to Keep Vigil Over is a collection of poetry that was composed during my time spent at UNLV. Comprised mostly of prose poems, it was heavily influenced by the works of Richard Hugo, Robert Coover, Joshua Marie Wilkinson and several French poets who are often categorized as being members of either the Symbolist or Decadent movement. At its best, the collection attempts to invoke a sense of Joseph Cornell's boxes--odd juxtapositions of everyday items and language that create new and uncertain circumstances. Unlike Cornell's boxes, however, the poems aren't …

About A Yellow Ball, Shannon Alice Salter

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

These are poems made from many things: color, eggs, oranges, many kinds of seeds, leaves, wind, California, the desert, birds. They are things alive in the world and alive in my heart. I cannot take them out of the world, but from my heart I can have whatever appears on its surface. The language of steam.

They are poems that like to be at home.

California is my home and so is the Mojave (and so is every desert). I live in a valley about four hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, in the city of Las Vegas. What better …

A Turkish Dictionary, Andrew Wessels

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The poems in this manuscript, A Turkish Dictionary, probe a number of related issues: What is the relationship between a word and its object? What is the connection between meaning in two different languages? How do we live in a city overwhelmed with history? What is necessary? How do we accept knowing that we cannot know? These and other questions constitute the investigative purpose of the manuscript as specifically and actively an exploration of the questions rather than an argument for a final, singular answer. Structurally, the manuscript uses two poetic forms: dictionary poems and prosaic poems. The dictionary poems …

An Examination Of The Compositional Style Of Dorothy Rudd Moore And Its Relationship To The Literary Influence Of Langston Hughes, Latoya Andriel Lain

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Dorothy Rudd Moore, born in 1940, grew up during a period in American history where many of the principles upon which this country was founded were denied to African - Americans. It was a time when black people in this country, amidst a struggle, were fighting for the basic human rights afforded to whites. In addition to protests, marches, and speeches, black artists used the power of artistic expression to communicate anger at the racial climate in America. Writers, dancers, actors, and musicians all used their various genres as platforms to speak out against inequality. Dorothy Rudd Moore and Langston …

Strike Out Across The Shoreless Ocean, Julia Claire Paajanen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

What happens between a reader and a poem is none of my business. The world has always been yours; find your own way.

(1) Every choice is correct.

(2) Everything is true.

(3) What is anything, unless so far as it is enjoyed?

All you have to do is see the course, and when you see it, go.

Standing In The Night, Karin Jane Millhouse

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Standing in the Night has been completed under the influence of phenomenology with its curious regard towards reality. Yet it makes no claims to be anything other than what it is: really, we're just making it all up as we go along.

Sensory Imagery And Aesthetic Affect In The Poetry Of Keats, Hopkins, And Eliot, Clare Louis Gerlach

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation focuses on applying a new method of analysis to selected works by three major poets, John Keats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T. S. Eliot. The project considers their work in light of recent scholarship by Charles Altieri on the affects, such as emotion, feelings, passion, and mood; how these affects operate in artistic works; and, specifically, examines how these authors employ the affects in their poetry to express their own emotions and, in the creation of lyric poems, turn these emotions into works of art. In addition, the project strengthens the aesthetic readings with a study of the …

Gods R Us, Alivelu Nagamani

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Around Grecian orchards. On Trojan battlefields. In Siva's realm. Inside Hanuman's heart. Of gods, demons, and others who love us, hate us, serve us, interfere with us. Of humans larger than life. When gods were not in hiding. About a space not reached via explanations. Poems in Gods R Us come from Greek/Roman and Indic myths, they retell myths, comment on myths, and refer to myths - they could not have been without myths. Distillation and attentiveness create the time needed to be one in the spirit of the poem. I range from reverential to playful.

From Feminism, Adam Strauss

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

From Feminism means to emphasize a world-view rather than an a-priori eye towards women; the manuscript does occasionally strike a generic feminist-didactic mode, but for the most part its concerns are with humanity/ecology and gender goes un-marked or people are altogether absent. The world is various, and in terms of form, the poems in this book are rangy: sonnets, prose poems, serial fragments, free verse tercets, measured and rhymed tercets, couplets, over-the-top monuments to generation by rhyme. Unconventional use of white-space occurs fairly frequently. My thought is that having breaks in articulation in two places, not just the end of …