Creative Writing Commons^™

Peppermint, Anthony Isaac Bradley

MSU Graduate Theses

This collection contains poetry introduced in a critical way via a theory-based creative nonfiction essay. The work included is a meditation on what identity means on both an intimate and a larger scale, and how the two might be affected by the choices we are faced with from a young age. Elements of pop culture are used alongside rural elements of the surrounding areas to illustrate changing or stagnant viewpoints on topics such as masculinity, gender norms, and queer expression. Peppermint is a document of my mind as it once was, and how it has been shaped up to this …

This Way Girl Comes Bearing Gifts, Alexandra Webster

MSU Graduate Theses

The following collection deals with autobiographical work. My purpose for this thesis was to present poems in which spoke to a girlish attitude under various circumstances such as age, location, and expectation. While this thread of girlhood lends itself as a conceptual framework, the poems themselves vary in style. They move between elements of imagism, narrative, lyricism, meditation, and some code-switching. I found that by letting the poems happen upon recognition and shape themselves out of memorable content rather than by trying to adhere to a strict concentration on one particular style or form allowed me ample materials for building …

Lesbian Love Sonnets: Adrienne Rich And Carol Ann Duffy, Robin Seiler-Garman

Senior Theses

Our conceptualization of sexuality is rooted in gender. Modern, western society defines sexuality as which genders one is and is not attracted to—often appearing as a binary between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Recently, however, queer theorists have begun to push against the idea of binary sexuality altogether.

The interplay between gender and sexuality additionally manifests in the history of literature. Because the two are so intimately intertwined, writing about sexuality necessitates writing about gender. Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich and Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy are two poetry collections where, as lesbian poets, gender and sexuality play an important role. …

New Year, Old Blues, Joy Bowman

Theses and Dissertations--English

This collection aims through the use of folktale and familial history to investigate the bounds of gender and memory against a rural Appalachian landscape. The work utilizes superstition, myth, and the commonplace to search the shadows for the forbidden and unspoken, in an attempt to redefine and reconcile personal dissonance through an observational and at times, voyeuristic lens.