Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Appealing To Truancy: How Mary Oliver Escapes Americana, John Wise

Student Writing

How the work of Mary Oliver disagrees with the American Cultural way of thinking.

Detroit Poet Laureate: A Local And National Necessity, Rosemary O'Meara

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

From 1981–2020, Detroit officials appointed a city-recognized poet laureate. Though the position has been vacant since the 2020 death of Naomi Long Madgett, this essay advocates for reinstatement of a Detroit poet laureate to help spotlight important Detroit artists and to ensure that the words and ideas of Detroiters are sustained and celebrated. A poet laureate would continue to uniquely serve Detroit to help preserve its complex history and contribute to a literary canon specific to the city.

"Loving You No Matter What You Do": Ai's Dramatic Monologues, 1970s Asian American Feminisms, And Reproductive Justice, Catherine Irwin

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay makes visible the 1970s involvement of Asian American and Women of Color feminists in reproductive justice. Grounded in the Asian American feminist praxis of remembering, this essay analyzes how three dramatic monologues by the Asian American mixed-race poet Ai engage with the discourses of reproduce justice set forth by Asian American and Women of Color activists leading up to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Using an Asian American feminist lens, this paper argues that the speakers in Ai’s monologues utilize these discourses circulating about abortion and women’s health care to construct images of the treatment of dispossessed …

Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21^st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21^st-century poets and their 20^th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …

Copper Sun, Countee Cullen

Zea E-Books Collection

Poet, playwright, novelist, graduate of DeWitt Clinton High, New York University, and Harvard University, Countee Cullen (1903–1946) emerged as a leading literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Copper Sun, his second book of poetry, explores the emotional consequences of being black, Christian, bisexual, and a poet in Jazz Age America—such as in the following “Confession”:

If for a day joy masters me,

Think not my wounds are healed;

Far deeper than the scars you see,

I keep the roots concealed.

They shall bear blossoms with the fall;

I have their word for this,

Who tend my roots with rains of …

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology Of Verse By Negro Poets, Countee Cullen , Editor

Zea E-Books Collection

CONTENTS:

FOREWORD

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR • Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes • Death Song • Life • After the Quarrel • Ships that Pass in the Night • We Wear the Mask • Sympathy • The Debt

JOSEPH S. COTTER, SR • The Tragedy of Pete • The Way-side Well

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON • From the German of Uhland • The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face • The Creation • The White Witch • My City

WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT Du BOIS • A Litany of Atlanta

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE • Scintilla • Rye …

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 …

A Claiming Of Kin: A Linguistic Analysis Of Southern Appalachian English In Melissa Range's Scriptorium: Poems, Jolee White

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The research studies the Southern Appalachian dialect present in five poems in Melissa Range’s Scriptorium: Poems. The linguistic phenomena characteristic of Southern Appalachian English observed and analyzed in the poems include lexicon, grammatical features, and phonological aspects. The research seeks to bring attention to this Appalachian woman writer as well as to bring understanding of her reasoning behind incorporating the dialect in her poetry. It establishes that the five poems by Range contain the lexicon, grammatical features, and phonological aspects of the SAE dialect. It holds meaning both grammatically and pragmatically within the context of the poem and Appalachia.

Joanne Kyger And “The Kook Strain” In Olson: A Reading, Patrick James Dunagan

Gleeson Library Faculty and Staff Research and Scholarship

Jerome Rothenberg's "that dada strain" at once hilarious grandiose epic lyric historical and ever adventurous charts the highs discovered in his reading of the dada era. In like occurrence this writing seeks to poke around in the occult cupboards of Olson's mystical leanings. Looking not only at his work and assorted readings/engagements but delving also into the works of various others (Joanne Kyger, Jack Hirschman, Paul Blackburn, Gerrit Lansing, David Meltzer, Robert Duncan, Diane di Prima, Robin Blaser et al) who fell in alongside as well as after his work's star-eyed haul. Loquaciously gifted as a talker, how much (if …

Twentieth-Century Feminine Visionary Poetics : Vulnerable Visions Of Survival And Healing:, Lucyna Prostko

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

H.D. and Denise Levertov, two visionary poets of the twentieth century, represent both female poets’ awakening of political and historical consciousness and their engagement with the poetics of vulnerability and survival. H.D. and Levertov offer lyrical visions that dismantle the binaries of real and unreal, earthly and transcendent, and individual and communal. The subject of this project is visionary imagination and its various reverberations, limitations, and potentialities. What is at stake in feminine visionary twentieth-century poetics is the creation of imaginative worlds, the space of possibility, and the shaping of a lyrical form that encompasses the voices of survival, vulnerability, …

Movement Upstream, Downstream: A Lyric Essay, Mong- Lan

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Early on, without knowing I was part of a movement, I was part of the movement of the Asian American cultural and literary phenomenon.

Because it was necessary to bear witness, to tell my story, my stories, our stories, the collective story, my observations, which keeps on unravelling, I began to write.

We Are Here, Susan K. Ito

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Walt Hunter. Forms Of A World: Contemporary Poetry And The Making Of Globalization. Fordham Up, 2019., Jeremy Glazier

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Walt Hunter Forms of a World: Contemporary Poetry and the Making of Globalization. Fordham UP, 2019. 190 pp.

Deconstructing The "Woman Of Sentiment": Parody As Agency In The Poetry Of Phoebe Cary, Scottie Garber-Roberts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The work of nineteenth-century American poet Phoebe Cary presents a complex puzzle of exigence and purpose that combines social structure, political climate, and personal history. Known for her somber and spiritual sentimental poetry, Cary shocked readers and reviewers alike when she published her collection Poems and Parodies in 1854, which contained a series of scathing and hilarious parodies based on popular sentimental poetry. In my thesis, I work to untangle the various contextual elements surrounding Cary’s writing in order to gain a better understanding of the dual nature of the poet and her work. Through an examination of nineteenth-century American …

Ai And The Other, Rosetta Dudley

Student Writing

Literary analysis in MLA format of 3 poems: "Conversation," "Cuba, 1962," and "Disregard" by Ai Ogawa which each address Othered speakers and characters. Links made to Emily Dickinson's writing and being Othered as a woman and non believer in a Puritan society. Overall theme: transcendence of circumstances as Other with the use of apostrophe and conceit.

The Charles Chesnutt Archive: Charles Chesnutt And The Black Community Who Aided Him, Bianca Swift, Bianca Swift

UCARE Research Products

A pioneer of African American literature and the first to reach a national audience with his writings, Chesnutt wrote nine novels, eighty-five short stories, and more than seventy essays and speeches. As a prolific writer Chesnutt often interacted with other black intellectuals and academics including; W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Walter F. White, and Kelly Miller. This poster makes the argument that his connections to these figures aided him in his writings and his presence in history. As well as comparing his standing in history as a black person speaking about race to the 21st century view through poetry.

The Figure Of The Animal In Modern And Contemporary Poetry By Michael Malay, Brian Bartlett

The Goose

Review of Michael Malay's The Figure of the Animal in Modern and Contemporary Poetry

Dickinson At Thirty, Philip Pardi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

When we say there are “no Mozarts in literature,” we point to an enticing fact: writers become. Pick any text you love or revere, and there was a moment earlier in the author’s life when it could not have been written. The writers we remember develop over time; they change and are changed. Their careers divide, if not always easily, into a before (often thought of as a kind of apprenticeship) and an after (a work or body of work that has a significant claim on our attention). Personal relationships, lived experiences, social and political contexts, readers real and imagined, …

Akron Poetry Catalog And Reader September 2019, University Of Akron Press

University of Akron Press Publications

In our mobile-sized poetry catalog and reader, you can read poems from new books by Oliver de la Paz, Joshua Harmon, Brittany Cavallaro, Krystal Languell, Tyler Mills, Caryl Pagel, Emily Rosko, Emilia Phillips, Aimée Baker, Anne Barngrover, Matthew Guenette, Leslie Harrison, Sandra Simonds, Philip Metres, and Jennifer Moore.

Through The Mouth: An Essay On Appetite And Ecocide, Iemanja Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of mourning and resilient joy in the midst of ecocide. Resisting the pervasive classification of the human as inherently destructive, I look to appetite as an aesthetic procedure that includes a material desire for intimacy with the more-than-human. My study considers the intersections of aesthetic production (primarily twentieth-century poetry and visual art), climate science, geology, cultural studies, theory within the contemporary nonhuman turn, and Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. I employ an interdisciplinary approach, which helps me explore the various ways that literal and figurative appetite can be a way of sensing and exploring …

Carleton, William Mckendree, 1845-1912 (Sc 3432), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3432. Typescripted excerpt from Will Carleton’s narrative poem, “First Settler’s Story,” first published in 1881, as recited in March 1895 by Berta M. Morton.

Cox, Hal Z., 1883-1952 (Sc 3414), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3414. Poem, “Old Kentucky,” written by Hodgenville, Kentucky native Hal Z. Cox in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Kentucky statehood. Includes a 2011 newspaper article about Cox.

Boyd, John Allen, 1938?-2017 (Sc 3394), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3394. Poems written by John Allen Boyd, a WKU graduate, teacher, and resident of Louisville, Kentucky. One collection is bound in pamphlet form and inscribed to WKU faculty member Frances Richards; others are included, with commentary, in a graduate project entitled “Experiments in Verse and Poetry” and written for an advanced composition class at WKU.

Spottswood, Henry Mercer, Iii,B. 1940 (Mss 665), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 665. Correspondence with poet and author Jim Wayne Miller, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Chiefly letters to Spottswood which contain numerous attachments about Miller’s writing and speaking engagements. Also includes a small amount of correspondence from Miller’s wife, Mary Ellen Miller, and an unpublished book of poems by WKU students.

Noe, James Thomas Cotton, 1864-1953 (Sc 3379), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3379. Christmas cards and letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from Cotton Noe, first Poet Laureate of Kentucky. Each includes a poem by Noe, but in his 1950 letter he advises Richards that he will be discontinuing this forty-year-long custom. He describes his activities with a poetry guild in Los Angeles, California, and recalls their friendship. Includes Noe’s obituary from the Louisville Courier-Journal and a 1969 clipping from the same paper about Noe.

Walton, Laura S. (Sc 3378), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3378. “The Prentice Poets,” an English paper by WKU student Laura Walton with sketches of the careers of four female poets who contributed to Kentucky’s Louisville Journal under the editorship of George D. Prentice.

Litsey, Edwin Carlile, 1874-1970 (Sc 3362), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3362. Letter, 19 July 1950, to “Mary Virginia” from Edwin Carlile Litsey, Lebanon, Kentucky. He thanks her for a recent request for biographical data and relates information about his daughter Sarah and her family. He also reports that both of them are working on books. Includes a typescript of Sarah’s poem “The Roads,” published in Scribner’s Magazine, December 1935, and a typescript of Litsey’s poem “King Solomon of Kentucky.”

Davis, Anne Pence, 1901-1983 (Sc 3357), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3357. Letters and cards to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from author and alumna Anne Pence Davis, Wichita Falls, Texas. She writes of her enjoyment of a 1962 visit to WKU, and in 1976 recounts recent activities and asks Richards’ help in preparing a program on Kentucky poets for the Kentucky Club of Dallas. After the program, she writes to thank Richards, encloses the club invitation, and relates news about her inclusion in volume 3 of the anthology Kentucky in American Letters by Dorothy E. Townsend, and about her gardening.

Obenchain, Lida (Calvert), 1856-1935 (Sc 3352), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3352. Handwritten narrative of Lida (Calvert) Obenchain (pen name Eliza Calvert Hall) about the writing and publication of her short story “Sally Ann’s Experience” and her books Aunt Jane of Kentucky, The Land of Long Ago, To Love and to Cherish, Clover and Blue Grass, and A Book of Hand-Woven Coverlets. Also includes a typescript of her poem “Macmonnies’ Bacchante” and a hand-bound volume of other typescripted poems written by her.

Barmann, Dolly Reed (Gilmore), 1902-1963 (Sc 3350), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3350. Two letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from author and poet Dolly Barmann, an Allen County, Kentucky native residing in Fort Worth, Texas, regarding her writing and her book of poems, Trammel Fork Creek. Includes clippings about Barmann’s work and two of her poems, “Goin to the Grist Mill” and “Moonshiners.”