Poetry Commons^™

A Puff's Exploration Of Wayne Hopkins, Ethan G. Mullen, Leon Wiebers

Honors Thesis

This thesis is a synthesis of modalities I have studied during the course of my Theatre Arts degree, applied to the realization of the principal character, Wayne Hopkins in the award-winning play Puffs (Or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic) a LMU Theatre Arts Department production. This work is divided into three major sections. First, I reflect on how I applied acting tools I have studied at LMU to the development of my character and performance. These include script analysis, story structure analysis, breath work, and Viewpoints training. Second, I share media displaying my …

Database: A Poetry Collection, Lara Dominique D. Solante

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Poets wield their pens to respond to various societal or cultural stimuli—including politics, art, science, and more. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is an exponential development that has become a leading topic of discussion. This project, titled Database, is a collection of poems that interrogates the tensions that exist between humanity and technology through the use of modern imagery, such as robots and virtual reality. These poems also examine the once distinct markers of humanity that characterized classical poetry, including emotion and sensory experiences, and reframes them within a contemporary context, giving technology and artificial consciousness a voice. Although this collection …

Thoughts, Lately, Thomas L. Reid

Theses

Swift changes in government occur through several avenues. One option involves quick decisive action that entails violence. These set of poems exhibit a reaction to suddenly changing political and social structures in America during the second term of a divisive executive administration. Alongside this change—the author’s personal experiences as queer individual in a historic area of the deep South.

To The True North In Us All, Tara St. Clair

Quill & Scope

No abstract provided.

Man's Conceit, Ahmed Al-Samak

Quill & Scope

No abstract provided.

For Whom The Bell Tolls, Christopher Liz

Quill & Scope

This poem was written after reflecting on time spent working in hospitals and medical environments both stateside and while deployed. In these spaces, alarms are constant—bells, monitors, and vibrating alerts competing for attention. Over time, the noise becomes familiar, and clinicians often struggle with what is known as alarm fatigue, where the urgency of each signal begins to dull. In that quiet realization, I found myself asking a simple question: who are these alarms for? The poem explores that moment of awareness and the effort to reconnect the sound of the bell with the life behind it.

The Tortoise, Alexa Gail Colinco

Quill & Scope

For my grandfather, Dr. Joel R. Colinco (1928-2017). The first physician in his family. A man who provided free medical care to all and who continues to do so through the Colinco Medical Mission Outreach. The 2009 Senior Poet Laureate of South Carolina. A deacon and choir director in the Philippines. A painter, tennis player, fisherman, crossword addict, gardener, and so much more. Eternally honored to be guided by his legacy and ethics. (Pang, we'll play Scrabble again in heaven, and I promise I'll spell neighbor correctly this time.)

Bearing, Christopher Liz

Quill & Scope

“Bearing” reflects on a moment of moral conflict in a combat environment, where training, survival and duty to care collide. In high-risk settings, medical service members are taught repeatedly that even in chaos, they must remain grounded; the instinct to run toward danger is tempered by the responsibility to preserve life, including their own, as a vital part of the team’s ability to continue care. The poem explores the tension between action and restraint, and the enduring weight carried when outcomes are uncertain and choices are final. In medicine, these moments become part of the cross we carry—quiet, often unseen, …

Caladrius: Creating A Playable Game Via A Multimedia Experience, Isabelle Morgan Brookshire

Whittier Scholars Program

Caladrius: Creating a Playable Game via a Multimedia Experience hones in on making an experience through different forms of media to represent a game. If this project was fully funded and done, it would be a video game on Steam with an art exhibition, small poetry book, and novel accompanied with it. It would even have a show, a soundtrack, and merch. But at this level, it was to make an experience for my audience that they could experience whether or not they enjoyed video games as a concept. I wanted them to enjoy 'playing' within a physical exhibition and …

After The Morning Light, Fiona Candland

English Honors Projects

One fall morning, Clarice, a woman in her mid-twenties, is getting ready for the day when she finds a black ground beetle crawling along her bedroom wall. The beetle consumes her, and throughout the day, Clarice undergoes a metamorphosis. Rendered in poetry and prose, After the Morning Light explores the cultivation of a self, questions the boundaries between humans and their environment, and portrays the fragile relationship between women and the act of being seen.

Harness The Darkness! Blackout Poetry And Drama Therapy For Systemic Existential Dread: A Proposed Methodology, Kerry Sullivan

Expressive Therapies Theses

This thesis explores the intersection of drama therapy and blackout poetry as a therapeutic intervention to address systemic existential dread (SED) among emerging adults. The proposed methodology is titled "Bringing Blackout Poetry to Life" and consists of five sessions designed to explore the participants’ SED and generate poetry, culminating in a public performance. By integrating elements from psychodrama and drama therapy with the therapeutic process of blackout poetry, the intervention intends to aid processing on all levels of the expressive therapies continuum (ETC), strengthen tolerance for uncertainty, and facilitate sustainable community action. This theoretical framework is supported by a wide-ranging …

Produce, Chelsea Parsley '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Chelsea Parsley is a sophomore Creative Writing major at DePauw University. She enjoys drawing, writing, singing, and accumulating obscure pieces of trivia.

The Ringworm Poem, Riley Hamilton '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Riley Hamilton is a Senior English Writing major and Studio Art minor at DePauw University. She loves acrylic painting, making abstract collages, and of course, reading and writing. She enjoys practicing yoga, hiking, and camping.

Reigniting Identity: Rediscovering My Teaching, Lifelong Learning, And Myself, Rachel Griffith

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

A culmination of two years of work and self-discovery represented through three different types of writing, two academic and one creative. The academic works explore communication and autism in the English classroom, as well as teaching technical writing in practice ways. The creative work is a poetry portfolio that is one of the author's proudest works from their degree track, covering a variety of topics from love to nostalgia to inner turmoil. Together, they narrate three reasons why the author writes, teaches, and lives.

How To Live Alone, Cora Gibson '27

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Cora is a rising senior at DePauw with a double major in pre-engineering and environmental geoscience, and a minor in math. Outside of rocks and integrals, she loves strong coffee, knitted sweaters, and a head back laugh with friends.

Silver Daylight (4 A.M.), Justine Vandenberg '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Justine Vandenberg is an Environmental Fellow at DePauw University majoring in Global (Environmental) Health and Sustainability. She is also a writer, poet, and photographer who is passionate about using artistic forms to advocate for the health of ecosystems and human communities. To Justine, nature is home, and art is activism.

The Illusion Of Absence, Abraham K. Ali

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Illusion of Absence is a collection of thirty poems with a critical introduction that examines the poetic legacy of paternal absence and the reconfiguration of family in Africa and diasporic narratives. I grew up in Nigeria without my father. His absence has shaped my understanding of love, silence, manhood, and home. This manuscript is an exploration of the lasting legacy of my father’s absence and its place within an exploration of masculinity within the broader context of the African and diasporic experience. My mother became the focal point within the home as she brought cohesion and unity within the …

The Ballad Of Blorg, Isaiah Morgan '26

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Justus Morgan is a Song major in his senior year at DePauw. He is delighted by those places beyond the expanding frontiers of his knowledge and writes about everything from not falling in love to imaginary wetlands to that one look from Margiela's S/S 1990 runway show. He recommends skygazing.

If The Flowers Were To Wither..., Ira Satpathy '28

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

Ira is a rising junior majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. They work at The DePauw, and also host a podcast on feminist philosophy. Ira loves to draw portraits, play badminton, and scroll their Substack feed endlessly.

Tropical Hardware, Shane Chase

Student Theses

A collection of poetry.

Preface: In the spring of 2022 I lived in Bethnal Green, a once working-class neighborhood in East London. I grew attached to the area as it gave me a life I couldn’t have back in Florida. Everything needed to subsist was contained within walking distance. My connection to the place grew strong each time I walked through Middleton Green or passed Keeling House rising up out of the fog as I made my way to work. Gradually, I developed a sense of isolation, smelling the salt from the gulf, an ocean that wasn’t there. The threat …