Creative Writing Commons^™

Conjuring The Moon, Ariella Berkowitz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Conjuring The Moon wrestles with the question of why we as women still submit to norms created by men who can't possibly understand our reality. Why should we support ideologies that claim to represent us while actively working against us? Why should we conform to a system that positions us as inessential Other? The speaker of this book aspires to liberate herself from such burdens. Conjuring the Moon encapsulates one woman's search for the feminine divine within herself, her religion, and her environment; but as empowering as this search may be, it remains inextricably connected to her social and historical …

A Million Little Griefs, Justine Hayes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A Million Little Griefs is a poetry collection that explores themes of time, place and identity through personal experiences and observations of a young mother living cross-culturally in Malawi, Africa. The book is divided into the three sections, Embrace, Ground, and Release (EGR,) which create a cyclical trajectory that serves as a guide for walking through transitions and new experiences.

Shades Of Blue, Allison D. Thomas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Shades of Blue" is a confessional narrative that explores the ways in which our lives can be covered in a tinge of color. The experiences that shaped this collection are marked by the calm powder blues and rough midnight blues that change the way we see and think about the world. This narrative work took on a confessional voice because of the autobiographical nature of confessional poetry. Like other confessional collections this work is an exploration of the self and the truth of life. This collection was constructed by employing various poetic devices and forms. Several poems take on correspondent …

Vatra: A Poetic Memoir, Ashley Nichole Stevens

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

When I initially began researching for and composing this collection, the idea I had in mind was a simple one: tell my great grandfather's story, on many Lemko-American immigrants lived in the early 1900s. However, it took several months for me to realize this was not the complete story. It required refinement. While I had always felt a significant connection to this particular side of my family, I could never articulate why. The genealogical and historical research I conducted spoke for me. My great grandfather survived numerous traumas associated with being an ethnic minority in his homeland as well as …

Elegies For My Past And Future Selves, Tori Michelle Hicks

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

“Here I stand at the beginning
with more questions than
answers”
–George Ella Lyon, “Provenance” from A Many Storied House

This collection of poems and flash memoir tries to be memory in the flesh. Perhaps it’s the other way around – this book is composed of memories striving to be poems, pieces of music, flashes of memoir, and photographs, all for the purpose of exploring who I was, who I am, and who I could become. Whichever way one interprets it, Elegies for My Past and Future Selves is a hybrid collection that looks at the events of my past, …

La Tela, Un Fluir, Hugo Javier Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Tesis para Escritura Creativa. Un libro de poesía. No se requiere abstracto.

Modern Ancient: A Thesis Of Poetry, Timothy Brian Dodd

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This collection of poetry examines the ontological dialectic outlined in the scholarship of Mircea Eliade. Three sections of poetry (Dissolution, Navigation, and Hierophany) explore the connections and disconnections between modern and ancient ontology and experience.

Burning, Nicolas Cooper

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Burning is a book of poetry about occult magic, the Catholic eye, the mind jewel, and the color of my skin under the summer sun. It is about my meditations in the shade under desert trees and the visions I had there about access, love, and social class. Burning is the flaming desire inside of me for success and recognition, and yet at the same time homage to the Zen Buddhist precepts of non-attachment and acceptance. It is my thirsting for the lost américa's touch somewhere between endless sands and yellow-painted concrete, about my parallel aspirations for poetic duende and …

I'M Never Fine, Joseph S. Lezza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Title of Thesis: I'm Never Fine

Joseph S. Lezza, Master of Fine Arts, 2019

Thesis Directed by: Nelson Cardenas, Ph. D.

The University of Texas at El Paso, Department of Creative Writing

During the course of my father's fifteen-month battle with pancreatic cancer, and in its oceanic aftermath, I became both intimately and uncomfortably familiar with the phrase "I'm fine." It developed into a practical and efficient tool for bringing about a quick shift in subject whenever my family situation came under question by a well-meaning friend, trepidatious relative and even during an unexpectedly emotional phone call with my …

Soot & Shadow, Christa Crawford

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Soot & Shadow is a creative nonfiction-based collection of poetry that focuses on the themes of freedom and loss. The manuscript delves into the lives of immigrant women, specifically those affected by the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and those who came to America as the brides of American servicemen following WWII. Based on eyewitness testimony, the poetry attempts to capture the essence of the events, the devastating tragedy, love, loss, and the freedom these women sought as they discovered Truth through adversity. The poetry itself explores various poetic genres while attempting to push against the confines of the page. …

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.

We Make Our Own Heaven Here, Allyson Whipple

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The poems in We Make Our Own Heaven Here are grouped around a series of artistic and intellectual concerns. The opening section of We Make Our Own Heaven Here covers a wide range of distances, as well as a number of topics, but ultimately, the pieces are grounded in the variegated landscape of Texas. In terms of subject matter, these are poems of ambivalence and tension. In these pieces, the speaker comes up against the beauty of the natural world, but also the danger within it. The poems in the second section of We Make Our Own Heaven Here engage …

Burning Signs Of Blue, John Veldt

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

I am a beginning poet, and these are my beginning poems. Indeed, I am not Lorca. However, I do believe that his spirit of duende is visible in my work.There is the visible anguish of desire in these poems (just to name a few): the desire to receive a father's love, the desire to be the human animal, the desire to find truth, and a parent's desire to protect her children. It is a longing, a melancholic desire, tinged and/or consumed with the knowledge of death and loss. There is the desire for lost lovers and lost children, the desire …

Her, Alessandra Narvaez-Varela

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

N/A

We Who Have Never Bled, Betty Frances Fisher

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The poetry in We Who Have Never Bled explores landscapes of the personal and the mythic, centering women in a position of both traveler on and witness to this journey that is both violent and hopeful, both personal and universal.

Happily Ever After And Other Lies My Childhood Told Me, Rachel Anna Neff

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A manuscript-length book of poetry with a critical preface centered on the idea of mythology, nursery rhymes, and foundational (Western) fictions and how the cultural norms and expectations that those texts create influence an individual, particularly with respect to gender and gender identity.

La Gente Entre Nosotros / The People Between Us, Gerard Stephen Robledo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This collection stems from the tradition of poetry of witness / anthro-poetry, and chronicles the lives of individuals within communities who are affected by racism, ignorance, and Americanization. The catalyst for this collection was the massive influx of immigrant children fleeing South and Central American, and Mexico to the United States in the summer of 2014. This event spurred a whirlwind of anger, confusion, and racism, which left children in the political crossfire. Thus, this collection is aptly titled La Gente Entre Nosotros / The People Between Us.

In this collection, I take the approach of the anthro-poet, to document …

Heat Seekers, Gavin Stephen Lambert

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

“Every land / carves a people, marks them heavy like an / accent,” writes Gavin Lambert in his poem, “In Summer We Move Slowly,” and Lambert’s collection explores the connective tissue of that very relationship—the one between a land and its people. On the dirt roads and highways that take us along the continuum from geography to identity (part drunken road trip, part afternoon stroll, part shambling hike, part not-so reliable history tour) he takes us on a journey through a strange and familiar landscape where “Every place is sacred / or near a sacred place.”

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.

Damas Y Caballeros, Guadalupe Mendez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Collected Poetry - Manuscript over socio - political and culturally relevant context.