Creative Writing Commons^™

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 …

Desert Body, Lauren Mckinnon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis is a collection of poems examining certain paradoxes of my body. As a survivor of sexual violence, my body relives trauma which makes it feel uninhabitable. I compare my experiences with the Southern Utah desert. The physical beauty, destruction and inhabitability of the desert teaches me to accept my body as both beautiful and full of grief. The poems move chronologically through my life, beginning with an abusive relationship at the age of sixteen, a move to Moab at nineteen, and becoming a mother at twenty-five. Ultimately, with the desert as my guide, I learn to accept my …

Salzburg's Baroque Architecture: A Historical Analysis And Poetic Response, Rebecca Malzer

Honors Projects

Salzburg, Austria is a city full of history. During the Baroque era from about the mid sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg designed and modeled the city with Rome, Italy in mind. Their loyalty to the Holy Roman Empire and with the Reformation in full swing, these Italian influences helped to build a pro-Roman Catholic style throughout the city. The Prince-Archbishops and their architects demonstrated Salzburg’s loyalty to Rome through the structures of Schloss Mirabell, Schloss Hellbrunn, and the Franziskannerkirche. In addition, these structures make for great inspiration for creative work, to which …

Digital Pastoral, Rebecca Holifield

Master's Theses

Digital Pastoral is a collection of original poems and a creative nonfiction essay, accompanied by a critical introduction.

To Want Too Much: Poems, Jacob Phillips

Graduate Masters Theses

This collection of poems captures a contemporary lived experience and moment by documenting, engaging with, and annotating upon feelings of modernity, present and emerging technologies, mysticism and spirituality, and intersections with present-day social order and issues. Equal parts recording and response, this thesis is response to the strange and precarious precipice of a contemporary life, this state of being alive and always on verge of something new, something beautiful, something futuristic, fantastical, dangerous, decisive, absurd, magical. It is the poet coming to terms with his own identity, queerness, and role within a world marked by the dichotomy of extremity and …

This World Hasn’T Killed Us Yet, Marcus Jamison

Theses and Dissertations

This World Has Not Killed Us Yet is a collection of poems that engage with notions of imminent/inherent death as faced by the former slaves and their descendants within the United States, particularly in the U.S. South. These poems build from utilizing concepts of Judeo-Christian creation mythology to craft an alternate mythology for those who populate the poems. The collection also gives credence to the impact of gospel, blues, and jazz music on the temperament and adaptability of African Americans, as well as the role of community in fashioning a life worth living in the face of accelerated death. Together, …

The Wind Still Blows: Poems, Sarah Alicia Solis

Theses and Dissertations

The Wind Still Blows: Poems is a collection of autobiographical poems and lyric essays that explore my journey with faith. This collection reveals the life of a young woman learning to meld Chicana feminist ideas and Christian belief. With regards to this introduction, the first-person “I” will be used to denote specific craft choices and critical frameworks that I, the writer, used within the collection, and third-person references to “the speaker” refer to the constructed narrator described in the poems. In this collection, the speaker offers up a history with anxiety disorders, fraught relationships with male figures, developing into an …

Infants Are A Collection Of Cells, Helena M. Blanco

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The poems in this collection represent three main themes within the work. The first theme relates to family and memory; how it changes over time and generation. The second theme focuses on music as influence outside of instruments; how poetic voice is a type of music in its cadence and rhythm. The third theme includes pop-culture’s lasting effect on current society and its nostalgic feel on the millennial population. Each theme embodies the poems messages of universal meanings along with abstract topics including certain groups such as geek culture and heavy metal fans.

Keywords:poems, pop-culture, music, family

Local, Jane Barnes

English Honors Theses

"Local" is a collection of poems broken into five sections: Locale, Catholicism, Maman, Death & Ghosts, and an epilogue. This collection explores the particular milieu of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and focuses on my experiences attending a Catholic school there and the deaths and losses I dealt with during that time. A number of these poems follow a long, narrative style and employ a confessional tone; the locale of rural Pennsylvania is present, either directly or indirectly as an undercurrent, in every piece. It was heavily influenced by Gwendolyn Brooks' work cultivating a poetic locale in her works, such as "A Street …

An Open Bag, Matilde Benmayor

Theses and Dissertations

What do we take with us? How much space should we leave in the bag for what we might find? This paper is a journey from under the rug and onto the pavement. Sowing spiderweb maps I try to make a new city my own.

Moments As They Pass, Jesus Armenta

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This is a creative project titled “Moments as They Pass.” It’s an anthology of poetry with over 106 original pieces, spanning over 135 pages. These pieces all center on the thematic elements of existential philosophy and its intersection with beauty, time, and concept of self. Each poem will explore a particular facet of existentialism. The anthology will be broken up into chapters that reflect each concept accordingly. There is a dialogue that occurs within each piece that will encourage readers to reflect on their own lives and how they navigate their own search for meaning. Ultimately, this creative …

Horsepower, Joy Priest

Theses and Dissertations

Horsepower is a collection of poems curated to be a cinematic, black femme, escape narrative. The speaker, who is experiencing a self-imposed exile from her home, radically envisions waywardness as aspirational.

Beyond The Limits Of Sight, Catherine Ntube

Theses and Dissertations

Beyond the Limits of Sight is a collection of poems exploring black diasporic identity through and beyond the silences that come to surround violence. In this experimental collection, black bars representing selective silence appear throughout the work, in protest of the compulsory release of licensing rights to the university and its corporate partners as a degree requirement, and in insistence that the poet be able to decide on what terms and via which platforms their voice enters the public sphere.

When We’Ve Left The Table, Lauren Rose Clark

Theses and Dissertations

When We’ve Left the Table is a collection of poems that explores personal identity as it relates to family and upbringing, as well as grief in its various forms.

Try To Remember Breath, Rita Chapman

Theses

A collection of original poems.

Bramble And Knife, Sara Ryan

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems that center on the themes of extinction, family, the female body, and the presence of the animal. During my time in the Upper Peninsula, I found a connection with the natural world around me, and this led to my fascination with animals and extinction, both of which manifested in my poetry. As I struggled with the residual effects of toxic relationships, as well as the bleak romantic landscape of the UP, I saw my own body reflected in the bodies of animals. I specifically noticed this reflection while studying the art of taxidermy; …

The Face Of A Young Girl, Isabel Acevedo

Poetry MFA Theses

This collection of poems grapples with identity. What is home in relation to one's physical surroundings and even personal relationships. "The Face of a Young Girl" is a coming-of-age, not quite grown-up poetry collection.

Catching On Dark In Public, Joshua Robert Long

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Catching On Dark In Public contains sixty pages of poetry compiled by the author during his time in the MFA program at The University of Texas at El Paso.

[There Is So Much Blood In Us], Lindsey C. Whitlock

Scripps Senior Theses

[There is So Much Blood in Us] is an ambiguously alternate universe in which absolutely nothing is true but almost everything could be. In these poems, tension between the absurd and the possible synthesize into one linguistically and psychologically driving force – discomfort. More than anything, I am writing about discomfort.

America’s media representations of women are almost always defined by a singular, and often sexualized experience. Yet, when I talk to the many wonderful / brilliant / badass / etc. women in my life, most of our truly defining experiences are impressively unsexy. Our womanity, if you will, orbits …

Food Transitions: How Food Symbolizes Another Chapter, Josiah Peralta

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Through critical self-analysis of my life, I intend to answer the question, “How does food help us transition from one chapter of our life to another?” My purpose is to provide a personal viewpoint about related topics associated with food, like class, origin of food, religion or lack of, culture and tradition, obesity, food choice, and love. Through this viewpoint, I will demonstrate how food associations can encapsulate our past, memories, and identity in a way that moves us from the past to the present, and, hopefully, the future.

Capstone theme: Food, Ethics, and Politics

Speaking To Honeybees, Alexander Wells

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

In The Way Back, Mark Rodehorst

Theses and Dissertations

This is a collection of poems that explores the intersection of place, memory, culture, and identity.

Belonging: A Place For, And In, Children’S Poetry A Hybrid Thesis Including Creative Works, Articles And Exegetical Discussion, Sally Murphy

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This hybrid thesis is comprised of three creative works – two collections of poetry for children and a verse novel – as well as three journal articles examining aspects of children’s poetry, and exegetical discussion of the creative works and of key concepts influencing both the creative and discursive elements of the thesis.

The first creative work, All About Me, is a collection of poetry for early childhood readers and their carers. It consists of 20 poems, and as a finished manuscript mirrors the length of a picture book format collection. The poems explore and highlight aspects of the …

New Rust, Lauren Walter

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A poetry thesis exploring issues of loss, death, creation, imagination, family, interpersonal relationships, nature, sexuality, and writing. The manuscript includes a preface that discusses literary influences such as Ai, H.D., and Sharon Olds, as well as writing in forms such as the dramatic monologue, imagistic poem, and confessional poem. Three main sections organize the manuscript's poems.

Bildungsroman, Mary M. Spooner

Honors Theses

Bildungsroman is an original collection of poems exploring issues of womanhood, relationships, motherhood, and growth. The majority of poems in this collection are written in free verse; however, the collection also includes several formal poems. Bildungsroman is accompanied by a critical preface.

My Assumption Is This, Alex Blonder

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

My Assumption Is This. A collection of poems that explore moments of ordinary life in an effort to understand the pieces of human experience.

Slow Emergencies, Jordyn N. Rhorer

Theses and Dissertations--English

Like the ever-circling lines in the skin of trees, sometimes the whole of a person is peeled back, layer by layer, until only seeds remain. Names, faces, stories, and relationships are unmade and molded into new shapes. Without warning, those left at the base, at the roots, can’t recognize this maple’s form. They hold a pile of leaves, a bottle of glue, and the hope that something familiar will take sprout again. The tree becomes new, and its tangled branches reach out. These poems explore the lives of those living with and caring for those with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. …

Guiding In And Away, Terry Belew

MSU Graduate Theses

“Guiding In and Away” is a collection of poems exploring shifts in contemporary American culture. Major themes include technology-induced anxiety, human connectivity, isolation, and the importance of nature in a man-made world. These themes are demonstrated throughout the collection through the use of speakers set into situations that reflect what is lost with the recent digitalization of human interaction, the isolation and loneliness caused by these losses, and how natural settings are encroached upon because of digitalization.

Bridging The Works Of Horace, Catullus, Ovid, And Haydock, George Bishop Haydock

Honors Theses

I wrote this thesis to explore the metrical poetry of Horace, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as my own poetry and short fiction. I parsed the Latin poems, word-by-word, and provided literal translations, as well as idiomatic translations of selected poems by Horace and Ovid. In order to link these translations to my short story, Into the Last Good Fight, I wrote three metrical poems that synthesize the themes, concepts, and structures of my story with the themes, concepts, and structures of the Latin poems. To provide an even stronger link between the Latin portion of my thesis and the …

Cautery, Aaron Brossiet

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cautery works with the tools of language and archetypes exploring memory, imagination, ecstasy, and suffering as well as life and death. The poems work to cauterize wounds and give scarred shape, but shape nonetheless, toward the future.