Creative Writing Commons^™

Monsters & Men, Christopher Ernest Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Monsters & Men is a collection of poetry and illustrations that explores the complex emotions associated with masculinity, grief, and personal development. I achieve this by heavily reflecting on my relationship with my late father and using this medium as an outlet to express my trauma in a healthy manner. How we perceive ourselves as men, and what is possible, is not reflected enough in society and I aim to be a proponent in stimulating the conversation revolving around men’s mental health. Men and the patriarchy impose themselves on others to the point where we need to address the unethical …

Womanist Poetics: Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, And Audre Lorde, Aya Telmissany

Theses and Dissertations

Today, the sentimentality associated with poetry is often condescendingly dubbed in a patriarchal society as “feminine poetry.” The first women poets who dared to attempt the pen were often met with attacks on their femaleness and harsh critiques of their writing which was likened to sorcery and witchcraft. Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Audre Lorde are three American women poets who countered these attacks and turned them inside out in favor of their own womanist poetics. They wrote about experiencing the world as women and most importantly about experiencing poetry as women. What happens to poetry when a woman appropriates …

Alice And Me, Myself, Little David, And The Right Side Of My Brain, David Cohen

Theses and Dissertations

This is an honest and open memoir of David Cohen’s life as it fits into the 13 years of therapy with Alice. The story is of David learning about his inner child and making a deal with him through non-dominant-hand writing. The result is for David to quit drinking and for the adult part of him to finally take control of his life. The narrative reviews key experiences of his past that influence the current issues.

The background research includes concepts from five key books that support Alice, the therapist’s, theories that have over 30 years of experience have developed …

Bough And Hollow, Jeffrey Dylan Nutter

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses poetry to explore the complex relationships surrounding the speaker and the father. Furthermore, the poems contained here work to address the major themes of language, family, and home in an attempt at unraveling the self and discovering identity. Another important touchstone for this thesis is the thread of abuse throughout the father’s life. Together the various threads and themes of this thesis are working toward a collective understanding of how the past and present manifest in the body and voice of the speaker.

The Youngest, Trezlen Drake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of poems that considers life in a southern Black family, memory, nostalgia, dysfunction, race and gender, and generational trauma. These poems are influenced by poetry, fiction, music, popular culture, and scholarship, each providing a different perspective on life and language to talk about that which can sometimes be unspeakable.

A recurring character in this collection is the girlchild, reminiscent of Marge Piercy’s character in “Barbie Doll.” The girlchild here is the figure of the woman or girl who experiences trauma, and what some consider to be unspeakable.

These poems are also an exploration and disruption …

Might Could, Cody Donovan Hosek

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses poetry to draw attention to the means in which we communicate ourselves and our experience, namely in the aftermath of loss—loss of loved ones, of a sense of home, loss of trust in the veracity of one’s own senses. While exploring these affective spaces, attention was drawn especially to the eye and the translation implicit in the mind’s work of perception. The writing process involved returning to the sites of home—the Outer Banks, the Blue Ridge mountains, Oconee county, the southern stretch of Appalachia—and it is in this dynamic geography that the images, more often natural than …

To Love The Birds And The Places They’Ve Made Their Home: Poems From The Magic Valley, Alyssa B. Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The theme of the collection could be summed up in these lines written by Caryll Houselander in The Reed of God, “body and soul together give glory to God: the sharper the capacity for sorrow and joy, the greater the hallowing...Christ laid hold of the world with His human hands...He wed Himself to it. Our life is the response of the bride” (66–67). Our loving connection to every human person is our loving connection to Christ—charity is our bride-ness. The poems follow one bride through her journey, with the author’s environment (the Rio Grande Valley) coloring the verses, as …

Detention, Virginia Murray-Torres

Theses and Dissertations

A novel-in-verse about a teenage girl's detainment in an immigration center, separation from her family, and removal proceedings hearing with a 360 degree point of view from the people she interacts with, as well as her own.

A Familiar House, William Lenard

Theses and Dissertations

The landscapes of my home in Connecticut are important to me. When I was young, I went to the woods for seclusion and comfort. While I wandered through the woods, I discovered a passion for storytelling. Now that I no longer live in New England, I miss the familiar landscapes of home. As a way to portray my sentiment, I write poetic narratives and create objects to illustrate natural landscapes.

I combine my interests of classic Americana art and literature with brutalist architecture and modern furniture to create immersive installations. I work with concrete and hardwood to materially bridge the …

After The Big Wind Stops I See Gentle Waves, Eunji (Jubee) Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers my reflections on the inspirations and the motivations behind selected works including my candidacy exhibition; Resonance and my thesis exhibition; after the big wind stops I see gentle waves. It contains my life throughout my MFA studies and the development of my art practice. Through its story-within-a-story method of narration and my describing streams of my thoughts, I am attempting to explain the processes of my development and the discoveries I have made, the little things in my daily life, and the big turning points that inspired me. My work and this document have been strongly determined …

Wave Of Arrival, Cathleen Bonner

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses poetry to explore the influences of space and geographical location on subjective perception and vision. More specifically, it aims to use landscape to observe the visible and invisible qualities of a geographical space, and investigate the ways in which perception of those spatial boundaries can be used to create self-portraits. It also aims to revise traditional, romanticized versions of the American West as manifested in poetry and photography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To do so, it focuses its attention on the man-altered landscape, rather than the pure, wild landscape as a space barricaded …

Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Empowerment Through Mimicry, Daniel Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

My collection is a polythetic assortment of poetry, prose poetry, monologue and drama that serves as a polyglottic exhibition of empowerment through mimicry. Like a mockingbird, whom the Aztecs call “cenzontle” in their Nahuatl tongue, my writer’s voice is polyvoiced. I include in this collection an eclectic variety of voices: personas, languages, forms, styles, and identities—often mixing them, in part to entertain and in part to challenge my boundaries as a writer, to stretch my vocal chords, so to speak, but also in part to challenge the lingering prejudice against such mestizaje—or meeting and mixing of cultures (and also voices)—and …

A Window The Color Of Her Sunburn, Joana Stillwell

Theses and Dissertations

I use video and material fragments to investigate the collapse of virtual and physical spaces as memories, lived environments, and digital interfaces become overlaid and interchangeable. I am interested in the capacity for technology to propose alternative strategies in which to engage with the world as we continue to extend ourselves in new and enduring methods. Seemingly unremarkable fragments offer new potentials in questioning meaning, worth, and care within spaces of downtime, boredom, and play.

This document accompanies my thesis exhibition a window the color of her sunburn. It provides background information on selected fragments and residues from my own …

From A Long Line Of Thieves, Lucinda Zamora-Wiley

Theses and Dissertations

This is a work of original creative writing, containing works of poetry, prose poems, flash non-fiction, and personal essays. The primary subject areas include family relations after PTSD, love, interracial struggles within marriage and family, pride of place--including Texas and the United States, and poetic/artistic inspirations that influenced the author.

If This Heart Had A Mouth: A Forbidden Romance Narrated Through Mimesis: Poems, Julieta V. Corpus

Theses and Dissertations

If This Heart Had a Mouth consists of forty-two poems where love is the catalyst for a multitude of emotions, ranging from falling in love, to hopelessness, to a begrudging kind of acceptance at losing the beloved to somebody else. To create all forty-two poems, 23 written in Spanish, and 19 poems written in English, I employed the literary device called Mimesis which entails deriving an original poem from someone else's work.

To create each poem, I followed another poet’s original work, line by line. I imitated that poet’s rhythm through their use of meter. I counted the number of …

The Canción Cannibal Cabaret And Other Songs: Feminists Of A Dystopian Future Repurpose A Punk Past, Amalia L. Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

This collection of poem-songs is an experiment in combining poetry and theatre. Focused on the theme of revolution and inspired by current issues of social justice, the manuscript is set in a not-so-distant future. After an environmental apocalypse, a refugee raised under an oppressive state, La Madre Valiente studies secretly to become the leader of a feminist revolution. Her emissaries roam the land telling her story, educating others, and enlisting allies in revolution. My goal is to transform the text into live theatrical performances so that the manuscript serves both as a poetry collection and as a script. Some critics …

Smoked Blood And Lavender, Diana L. Elizondo

Theses and Dissertations

My project is a demonstration of how the Gothic genre can still have an influence in contemporary poetry as well as how the traditional forms can still be effective when developing diction and originality. This project is a collection of poems that addresses a range of issues in society and politics, as well as the deconstruction of the notions of romance in everyday life. In the introduction to my thesis, my poems are analyzed stylistically, as well as the themes they represent and the sources that influenced them. Furthermore, my poems are divided in five sections and each focuses on …

Black Heart, Brandon Rashod Hodges

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Volumes, Matthew Brooks Stark

Theses and Dissertations

Volumes is a book-length work of poetry in three parts. Volumes investigates the process of art, wherein the creative act constructs both the created object and its creator the artist. I use the term "creation" rather loosely: I propose such an act to be present within one's self-recognition, imaginative contextualization of oneself within a setting, or performance of a role. Volumes, through Ars Poeticas, struggles with ideas of self-awareness, wherein the artist achieves a unique determinacy before and after a creative act because the artist is necessarily changed by the act of creation. The project struggles against the opaqueness of …

Room Blooming Red, Ashlyn Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

This creative thesis explores identity and family.

And Still It Moves, Elizabeth Breen

Theses and Dissertations

This manuscript represents thirty-two poems written over three years. Major themes include: split selves, family, death, astronomy and fear of flying. I hope to showcase a diverse range of poetic forms while maintaining a consistent but fluid voice. The collection takes its name from unconfirmed anecdote about Galileo Galilei: when asked by the Italian Inquisition to recant his claim that the earth moved around the sun he did--and in doing so saved his own life. However, legend has it as he left he said under his breath eppur si muove or "still it moves." Regardless of what we say about …

Children Of House, Grant White

Theses and Dissertations

A collection of poems

Angels And Demons: Christina Rossetti’S Goblin Market As A Social Critique Of The Victorian Ideal Of The “Angel In The House” And The Pre-Raphaelites’ Response To That Ideal, Melissa Adams

Theses and Dissertations

Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market presents a subversive critique on the socially constructed dichotomy of Angel versus Demon as depicted in Pre-Raphaelite artwork, Dante Gabriele Rossetti’s poetry, and Coventry Patmore’s poem Angel in the House. An analysis of Goblin Market in relation to Patmore’s poem and the Pre-Raphaelite paintings The Annunciation, Ophelia, Lady Lilith, Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses, and Sibylla Palmifera and Dante Gabriele Rossetti’s poems “Soul’s Beauty” and “Body’s Beauty” illustrate the ways in which Rossetti presents a counter-image that breaks down this socially constructed dichotomy. This is additionally supported by an exploration …