Poetry Commons^™

Pure Act: The Uncommon Life Of Robert Lax [Table Of Contents], Michael N. Mcgregor

Biography

Pure Act tells the story of poet Robert Lax, whose quest to live a true life as both an artist and a spiritual seeker inspired Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, William Maxwell and a host of other writers, artists and ordinary people. Known in the U.S. primarily as Merton’s best friend and in Europe as a daringly original avant-garde poet, Lax left behind a promising New York writing career to travel with a circus, live among immigrants in post-war Marseilles and settle on a series of remote Greek islands where he learned and recorded the simple wisdom of the local people. …

Studying Light And Color In Tuscany, Marissa Stanton

Honors Scholar Theses

I will conduct research about color, light, and atmosphere in a series of realistic landscape paintings. I will also write poetry and prose to narrate how I respond to my environment, and to reflect upon my work and how it is developing in that atmosphere. I will visit both Renaissance and contemporary museums and galleries. This will help me to learn more about the pluralistic culture in Italy, and how the dialogue between the old masters and new thinkers might function in my own work. Afterward, I will continue to develop my research by creating a final series of paintings …

On Navigating Life As A Deceased Lutheran Pastor’S Daughter, Kathy Roberts

Creative Writing Minor Portfolios

This portfolio is a collection of my favorite original pieces of creative nonfiction and poetry which I wrote during my undergraduate studies at Cedarville University. “My Uncle: Handyman Who Never Left” was published in the June 2014 edition of Spittoon, and “Hiking the Grand Tetons. Milking a Cow by Hand.” has been accepted for publication in Creative Nonfiction. This collection expresses pain from my dad’s death and circumstances that followed it, instances of healing, and aspects of life both before and since. I present to you On Navigating Life as a Deceased Lutheran Pastor’s Daughter.

Leaping Off The Page And Melding Modes: The Multimodal Space Poem As A New Form Of Poetry, Todd J. Erickson

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This paper develops and makes an argument for a new form of poetry referred to as a space poem, defined as a poem that is composed with an awareness of multimodality during its creation in such a way that results in a poem in which multiple modes work together symbiotically to create the poem. I trace the development of this concept over the course of my experience as a student in the Critical and Creative Thinking Master’s degree program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Beginning with a consideration of my past artistic multimodal projects created at different moments during …

At Your Prettiest/Your Name Is, Jake Phillips

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

This is a poem showing the progression of my feelings in relation to my gender throughout my life. I identify as both non-binary and as a genderfluid demi-boy, which means I feel my gender changes occasionally, but I usually feel male. I am a member of the trans community, specifically the non-binary portion within it, and I feel this poem accurately represents how that gender identification showed itself as I grew up, even before I realized I wasn't a girl.

Fusion Of Art Forms Across The World: An Examination Of Contemporary Dance Improvisation In England And America, Jade Primicias

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Artists in the dance world are now experimenting with new and more varied subgenres of contemporary dance such as contemporary dance improvisation, but audience reception of this type of work is incongruent from country to country, and even from place to place within one nation. In America, the artistry spans from those who are making breakthroughs and experimenting with new techniques to companies which continue to perform celebrated repertoire. Because of London’s role as a world leader in the arts, and its geographical location in England, avant-garde artistry is especially common throughout that nation. The author spent time studying in …

The Obsessional Information Professional: Four Decades Of Versifying Libraries And Librarians, Richard Hacken

Faculty Publications

Occasional poetry and parodies written by Richard Hacken from the 1980s to 2016 in honor of libraries and librarians:

In chronological order from the Harold B. Lee Library: John Taylor; Janet O. Francis; Gerald K. Dick; Sterling Albrecht; Roy Daniel; Keith Stirling; Don Howard; Haybron Adams; Christina Almond; Marvin Wiggins; Gary Gillum; Susan Fales; Randy Olsen; Richard Jensen; Karen Griggs; Deb Hatch; Julene Butler; Mark Grover; Tom Wright; Marianne Siegmund

Occasions: retirements, HBLL Christmas parties, introductions, farewells, BYU Library School reunion

From Northwestern University: Jeff Garrett. From Harvard University: Charles Fineman. From University of Wisconsin: Barbara Walden. From University of …

Heaven's Disco Dances, Savannah Leigh Osbourn

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Heaven’s Disco Dances is a collection of poetry about finding identity through defamiliarization and displacing oneself from reality to better understand it. Within the literary community, there is a great deal of derision toward writing that fails to be “real” or “serious” enough, and poetry is an excellent example of how sometimes the extraordinary speaks to us in ways that realistic fiction cannot. The marvelous and fantastic might serve as an escape from the world, but not necessarily from reality. Rather, they give readers a different lens on life, and sometimes that makes it a more powerful one, because people …

Around An Image, Alexander Macphail-Fausey

Creative Writing Minor Portfolios

This is a collection of poetry and creative nonfiction from the four years I attended Cedarville. Each of the pieces originated from a specific image and allowed that image to shape the rest of the work. I use the concrete images to engage complicated ideas or situations I have experienced. I use the writing in this collection to better understand the things I have experienced. The nonfiction shorts “Scar Tissue,” “Sunday 26 January 2014,” and “Malibu Beach: Camp Lot 29” have all been published in the Marco Polo Arts Magazine.

There Is An Unformed World In The Sky Of My Heart, Nathanael T. Spanos

Creative Writing Minor Portfolios

“There is an Unformed World in the Sky of My Heart” contains works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. All the pieces were written after my conversion to Christ in December 2012 and before my graduation from Cedarville University in May 2015. Though my spiritually-themed poems are the pulse of this portfolio, the title refers to the fantasy world of Sembercron, which I am discovering and creating through my writing. The title also refers to heaven growing in my heart, or Christ’s image supplanting my own, or God sanctifying me for his purposes. This portfolio observes, explores, and delights in this …

Between Two Worlds, Stephanie Tillman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

“Original Sin”—evocative and powerful words, but what if they were applied to one of the world’s most popular fairy tales? This thesis explores Snow White in the context of the Seven Deadly Sins and the grand fall of Adam and Eve. The forbidden fruit manifests itself in different ways, pulling the prim and proper princess into places she never could have imagined. But what of the Wicked Queen, here known as Lilith? She too feels the bite of the world’s sick sense of humor, exacting revenge on those who have wronged her. Are these poems about them? Or are they …

"Poetry In Translation", The University Of Maine School Of Performing Arts

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

"Poetry in Translation," is a public lecture by Dr. John Burns. The lecture is scheduled for Wednesday, September 16th, 2015 at 4pm in Hill Auditorium. Dr. Burns will also meet with classes in the English Department and the Department of Modern Languages and will narrate "The Cloths of Heaven," a Faculty Series Concert of song settings of W.B. Yeats' poetry on Friday, September 18th in Minsky Hall.

New Tricks (2015), John Nelson, Stacey Berry, Laura Otteson, Laina Darger, Jared Lampe, Chelsea Meyer, Dillon Dwyer, Ashley Geditz, Sarah Sproul

New Tricks

"As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul." Hermes Trismegistus

I am but a humbly painted vessel of the Almighty Artist, here to share in this uniquely significant piece of the great mural. They say that art imitates life and that through the creation of art we become one with the divine painter of the universe. That is why the calling of the artist is the most noble of pursuits, for the artist is the truest reflection of the source of things. Yet art is not finite and cannot be nailed down. Like the …

Banshees: Poems, Eileen P. Kennedy

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Education, Crystal C. Gray

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

Education is a spoken word poem that explores many aspects of the African American struggle within (self-knowledge). It starts with an African American college student who is disappointed with the lack of courses about her culture. Most curricula in the United States tend to be from a Eurocentric perspective, leaving out a multitude of information about people of color. All groups of people of color have unique experiences, however, African Americans have the most known (or perhaps I should say, unknown) history. The standard explanation of their existence is often limited to the start of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, when …

Martha Mcmillan And Victorian Periodicals And Poetry (1868), Adam J. Wagner

Martha McMillan Research Papers

No abstract provided.

Gen Ms 31 Thomas Carper Papers Finding Aid, Megan Hendrix

Search the General Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Description:

This collection contains poems, writing logs and published works of poet Thomas Carper. Originally from Cornish, Maine, Carper is a Professor Emeritus who taught poetry and creative writing at USM from 1967 to 1997 and currently divides his time between Maine and France. The Papers include multiple drafts showing revisions of the poem along with the final version.

Date Range:

1982-2007

Size of Collection:

2 ft

Reinventing Language, Vowel By Colorful Vowel, Clark Lunberry

English Faculty Research and Scholarship

A Fable of a Fable, or “The Story of One of My Follies”: After he’d invented “the color of vowels,” regulated the “form and movement of each consonant,” the young poet then, applying his “instinctive rhythms” to the task, proudly proclaimed that he had alchemically created “a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.” Notably, with his project in place, this poet, Arthur Rimbaud, tells us that he was then quick to “reserve translation rights.” This legal move on the poet’s part was perhaps thought initially necessary because, as he notes in 1873, the described synesthetic impact of …

"Not I!": Strategies Of Post-Millennial Confessionalistic Poetry, Charlotte J. Pence

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

With the technological ability and pop-cultural fascination to record private moments and distribute them, poetry that reveals personal details and conflates the identity between speaker and author must feel the effects of what could be viewed as an over-saturation of the confessional—which was during the 1950s and 1960s with Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath a political, rebellious act. It is far from that now. In this Kim Kardashian era, revealing sex tapes are used as marketing tools to launch careers whereas once they destroyed careers. Considering the hyper-confessional climate of our era and that “Confessional” is something of …

In Praise Of Mary O'Donnell, Eamon Maher

Articles

No abstract provided.

Nec(Romantic), Cathleen F. Chambless

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

NEC(ROMANTIC) is a poetry collection thematically linked through images of insects, celestial bodies, bones, and other elements of the supernatural. These images are indicative of spells, but the parenthesis around romantic in the collection’s title also implies idealism. The poems explore the author’s experiences with death, grief, love, oppression, and addiction. NEC(ROMANTIC) employs the use of traditional forms such as the villanelle, sestina, and haiku to organize these experiences. Prose poetry and a peca kucha ground the center of NEC(ROMANTIC) which alternates between lyrical and narrative gestures.

NEC(ROMANTIC) is influenced by Sylvia Plath. The author uses Plath’s methods of compression, …

Magic City Gospel, Ashley M. Jones

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Magic City Gospel is a collection of poems that explores themes of race and identity with a special focus on racism in the American South. Many of the poems deal directly with the author’s upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, the Magic City, and the ways in which the history of that geographical place informs the present. Magic City Gospel confronts race and identity through pop culture, history, and the author’s personal experiences as a black, Alabama-born woman. Magic City Gospel is, in part, influenced by the biting, but softly rendered truth and historical commentary of Lucille Clifton, the laid-back and inventive …

Blotto In The Lifeboat, Paul Christiansen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Blotto in the Lifeboat is a book of poems that investigates natural processes and idiosyncrasies of human societies. Ranging from the absurd to the scientific in tone, the poems in Blotto in the Lifeboat situate themselves on the blurry-line between fact and imagination, employing a style that Thomas Lux describes as “imaginative realism.”

The middle of three sections is comprised solely of the long poem, “A Compendium of the True and Wondrous,” which collages remarkable facts and anecdotes to highlight the strange realities of the world and the rapidity of change. The first and third sections contain shorter, narrative poems …

Okay Cool No Smoking Love Pony, Annik I. Babinski

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This poetry collection moves from the narrator’s childhood in the marshes of Canada to her coming of age in a new, southern swamp in South Florida. Many of the poems use free verse as well as fairly recent poetic forms like the Golden Shovel and the Pecha Kucha. Others rely on wordplay and nonce forms. Influenced by Hector Veil Temperly, Matthew Zapruder, Dorothea Lasky, Laura Kasischke and Anne Carson, the poems often employ simple language in stream of consciousness, and oscillate between lyric and narrative. These poems are feverish creations inspired by the oracular tradition and induced by the psychic …

Asterisms, Erica N. Kenick

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ASTERISMS is a collection of lyric poetry that seeks to express a sense of awe for the natural world by exploring themes of science, art, and the self. By combining physics and metaphysics, scientific terminology and musings on love, ASTERISMS argues that these seemingly-disparate fields of knowledge can harmonize in unexpected ways.

In its style, the collection draws from the works of Dorianne Laux, Pablo Neruda, and Annie Dillard. Most of the poems are written in free-version and are tied together by images of astronomy and wilderness, both modern and prehistoric. Poems about classical music appear as interludes meant to …

Finding Aid To The Collection Of John Masefield Materials, John Masefield, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The collection contains correspondence from and to Masefield, dated 1899-1960 and undated; manuscripts and published materials, music using the poet's words, and materials about the poet.

A Mathematician's Villanelle, Gizem Karaali

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Brooks Library National Poetry Month Poster, 2015, Brooks Library

Brooks Library National Poetry Month 2015: Local Poets

The Brooks Library created this poster to promote weekly readings by local poets to celebrate National Poetry Month 2015.

Rhinocéros: Animals, Ideologies And Global Awareness, Brenda Crosby

French

French IV-V students read the Theater of the Absurd play Rhinocéros by Eugène Ionesco. The foci of this unit are more oriented toward history, politics, global awareness, and unexamined assumptions (les idées reçues) than theater as such. Students do, however, present most of the play in the Reader’s Theater style. The pre-reading activity introduces the final evaluation of the unit. Students first associate animals to ideologies and concepts. This first activity also allows the instructor to introduce the ideas fanaticism, totalitarianism, and conformism. The final assessment asks each student to chose one country, not necessarily a French speaking country. For …

Poetry Inspired By Art, Brenda Crosby

French

The activity is part of an Art, Beauty, and Aesthetics unit. First, students read a short text about the notion of the window, and how looking through a window frames or changes our perspective. Students then read and analyze Charles Baudelaire’s prose poem “Les fenêtres”. Students are provided copies of teacher selected paintings and photographs, each of which features a window. In class, they write any words that the image evokes for them. From this initial writing, they write an original poem inspired by the painting or photo. This activity encourages vocabulary development, close observation of one work of art, …