Poetry Commons^™

Walking In A Burnt Hole, Sophia Friedman

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Holocaust stems from the Greek word “burnt hole,” but when the word Holocaust is mentioned today it refers to the rise of Nazi Germany in 1933 until the fall in 1945 (Skloot). More specifically, the Holocaust refers to the 11 million persecutions through concentration camps. The Holocaust is widely studied for various reasons, but the biggest reason is that “’we are seekers of understanding in the territory defined by those events” (Skloot 9). Through written work, such as poetry and plays, the Holocaust is brought to life in a more realistic way.

Through art we are able to connect to …

Innovative Representations Of Light, Behaving As Both Particles And Waves, Among The Paintings Of Monet And Renoir, Charles Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Monet and Renoir, friends collaborating in open air about 1865, discovered that sunlight filtering through a canopy of tree leaves does not produce the splotches and dapples that studio artists conventionally represented at the time but circles of light. Sometimes the circles of light punctuating the shade are clear, separate and crisp, as though light is being propagated as particles, but if the pin-hole gaps between leaves are very close together, they will project compound or superimposed circles that look like the waves that Thomas Young saw in his double slit experiment in 1803-4. Newton’s Opticks published in 1704 had …

On The Origin And Future Of Poetry: Notes Towards An Investigation, Carlos Aguasaco

Publications and Research

An exploration on the historical and material conditions that allowed the emergence of metaphors and poetry alongside language. This article analyzes the historical relation between poetry and technology across history. It discusses the so-called ontological crisis of poetry and opens the conversation on its future.

Frederick Ii: Holy Roman Emperor Extraordinaire, Prose/Poem 7/23/2014, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Frederick avoided fighting the 6th Crusade by negotiating a peaceful sharing of Jerusalem by people of all faiths. No doubt it helped that he spoke Arabic and personally engaged in five months of negotiations rather than combat.

Blowin’ Against The Wind, Prose/Poem 7/17/2014, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Thoughts on Science, Contemporary Poetry and Human Nature.

Full Issue, The Editors

The Catch

No abstract provided.

On The Whale-Way, Sarah Harlan-Haughey

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Dirt, Bianca Lech

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Hard Frost, Bianca Lech

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Off To School In The Atlantic (Tremont, Maine), Matthew E. Bernier

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Volume 2, Kathleen Ellis

The Catch

No abstract provided.

Jeanne D'Arc: Maid Of Oleans, A Prose/Poem 6/4/2014, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

A poem introducing a theory of how Joan, an illiterate teenager, inspired a demoralized French army to defeat the English.

De La Inseguridad A La Estabilidad: Como Pablo Neruda Utiliza El Amor Y La Poesia Para Superar El Exilio, Marissa Peck

Honors Theses

This thesis explores exile and its effects on the lives of those who experience it. Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean poet of the 20th century, lived in exile for three years, during which he continued to write and publish his poetry. The negative and positive consequences of exile, such as the loss of identity and the experience of traveling and knowing others, respectively, can be seen clearly in the poetry of Neruda during and after his exile. Exile has a great effect on the personal life of the exiled and this logically is expressed in the exile’s work, especially for …

Artemisia In The Metro, Emily A. Francisco

Student Publications

The “art poem” is an intriguing form of poetry. In writing about something that is inherently visual, a poet must remold a work of art into new material, drawing upon the work’s elements of form such as color, line, use of light, contrast, and composition to make his or her own reflective statement, beyond simply describing the artwork’s own content. In my poetry I aim to take this model of the “art poem,” and, through extended experimentation with this idea of ekphrasis (writing about art in a poetic context), intend to suggest a more intimate connection between art and language. …

Romance And Reason: Contextualizing The Arthurian Romances Of Chrétien De Troyes, Alexandra Borkowski

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The twelfth century saw the birth of the romance in literature, as well as the intellectual and social developments of humanism. The romance often involved the adventures of the knight, focusing on the behavior of the knight using the ideals of courtly love and chivalry. Chrétien de Troyes (c.1135-c.1183) contributed to the discussion of chivalry and courtliness by writing narrative poetry involving the Arthurian legends. He focused on the consequences of his knightly characters’ choices in order to show examples of how a proper knight should behave. This emphasis on the choices of each knight conveys a humanistic perspective, which …

Editor's Note, Catherine Schmitt

Catherine Schmitt

No abstract provided.

Born In 1930, Prose/Poem 3/7/2014, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

A homage to Presidrnt Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his America, political democracy was extended toward economic democracy. His policies began to be reversed in the 1980s. We are living in the desert of inequality created by that reversal.