Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The American West, 1899–1936: Prose, Poetry & Drama, Harriet Monroe, Michael R. Hill, Lindsay Atnip

Zea E-Books Collection

This comprehensive volume presents Harriet Monroe’s (1860–1936) previously unexplored love affair with the American West, an infatuation that blossomed in three interrelated genres: prose, poetry, and drama. Known internationally as the founder and influential editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, here Monroe is revealed as a prolific author with a passion for the people, scenery, and environments she encountered during western escapes from her constricted urban life in Chicago. Monroe’s western travels were transformative. Originally schooled in the literary and artistic traditions of Europe, Monroe became increasingly convinced of the fundamental importance of the American West as the …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

Fifteen Poems, Caleb Petersen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

FIFTEEN POEMS is a thesis consisting of a critical introduction on the development of my understanding of craft, the poetic influences which have shaped my poetry, as well as a collection of poems. The essay addresses both the form and content of the collection, as well as my history with poetry. It provides details about the process of creating this collection, and it portrays some of the vision that motivates it. The poetry which follows is a reflection on myself, my body, and my landscape, as I ask the question, who am I in this place? Situated in Lincoln, Nebraska, …

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

Dancing And Poetry: A Study Of The Whirling Dervish Dance Through Rumi’S Poetry, Tasneem Huq

Honors Theses

This exploration investigates the influence of Rumi’s book of poetry, Mathnawi, upon the Sufi practice of the Whirling Dervish dances. It argues that Rumi’s Mathnawi underlies the choreography of the Whirling Dervish dances. Each step of the dance expresses, manifests or embodies themes found in Rumi’s poetry: separation from Unity, ascension, annihilation, and a return to Unity. The thesis introduces this argument, and then discusses historical, theological, and linguistic themes related to Rumi, Sufism, and the Whirling Dervish dances. Following this, the thesis provides a framework that begins with the Neoplatonic theory of emanation grounding Rumi’s poetic thought, followed by …

Great River Legs, Laura Madeline Wiseman

Zea E-Books Collection

Great River Legs is a lyric collection of prose poetry, creative nonfiction, and found poetry. This creative response documents my 1,398 mile, 25-day bicycle ride from Muscatine, Iowa, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, between October 2017–March 2018. The journey took place in legs over breaks during the school year, with two additional back-to-back weekend rides that started the adventure.

In her latest book, Great River Legs, Laura Madeline Wiseman takes you on an intimate journey as she weaves in and out of a cross-country, long distance bike ride. In this beautifully curated book that includes prose poetry, creative non-fiction and …

Uproot, Jake Gentry

UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research & Creative Activity

Short story titled Uproot by Jake Gentry in UReCA: The NCHC Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Activity, 2021, pages 177-180.

First sentence

My Grams glanced up from her newly planted irises, her blue eyes spotting her 7-8-9-something-year-old grandson across the yard.

What She Became?, Sarwa Abdulghafoor

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

WHAT SHE BECAME? is a thesis comprised of a thirteen- page introduction and 35 poems. As is evident from the title, the poems are about the poet’s unsettling personal and creative journey, as well as her personal movements, her traumatic childhood, her individual and cultural backgrounds. The author takes her readers through the experiences of women in war-torn Iraqi Kurdistan from the early 80s to the present day. Her poetry gives you a glimpse of life under a patriarchal regime that attempts to stifle women’s voices. The introduction dives deeper into her own personal history as a female Kurdish writer, …

Woven, Adrienne Christian

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Woven is a collection of love poems about people of African descent, all of which feature clothing in some prominent way.

The why of what one wears runs deep. This creative work explores that connection.

Advisor: Kwame Dawes

A Pint Of Dirt, Kristen Friesen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This collection of poetry consists of 50 pieces focused on events and observations experienced by the author: a midwestern, middle-aged teacher, wife, and mother of three now-grown daughters. As much as it is an attempt to process and package the ordinary and unexplainable, it is also a study in metaphor, description, and the ways in which specificity of time and place can, hopefully, render a piece universal.

Advisor: Stacey Waite

Burnt Lavender & Other Remnants, Danielle Airen Pringle

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The following is an essay on the craft of poetry. It talks about influences for poetry writing including other poets, history, music, and the poet’s personal life, as well as the process of writing poetry throughout the poet’s life. The work focuses on how her poetry has developed and what she is trying to accomplish with her poetry in regards to women, power, and desire. The poems are usually persona poems written from the perspectives of medieval women (either real or imagined) and a few of her own personal poems. A sample of some of the poems are included here. …

The Only Way Forward, Michael Reed

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Only Way Forward is a creative thesis with a combination of Poetry and Fiction. There is a short introduction that shows the form and styles Michael has used as well as his back story into the creative writing world. He talks about many different authors that have helped him through his journey as well as many other peers and mentors. His biggest take away with his education is to “Just Keep Writing.”

Things I Haven't Told You, Kimberly A. Tedrow

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Things I Haven’t Told You is a three-part thesis that consists of a critical introduction, a creative sample of ten poems, and an essay on using the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley as a creative prompt.

A critical introduction to the creative sample discusses the contextualization of memory, the observation of the physical world, and the rare metaphysical moments that occur in an ordinary life. The genesis and evolution of the work is explored, as well as the poet's development during the course of graduate study.

The creative sample of ten poems includes poems that articulate the malleable relationship between …

Leaving Myself Behind, Shea Montgomery

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This work presents poems detailing different events of my life in an almost chronological order, while at the same time juxtaposing them against the backdrop of a life changing car accident I suffered through when I was 21. The events detailed within the poems reflect moments in my life that occurred either before or after this car accident, and I have arranged them in such a way that I hope will show my own struggles with masculinity while growing up, while at the same time realizing my own mortality by the end.

The poems contained within this work detail my …

Poets Don't Ride Motorcycles, Andrew G. Tully

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This is a collection of poems that focus more on minutia and happenstance than larger universal themes. Using free-form lines and stanzas, spare construction, and dark yet powerful imagery, these poems remind readers of the meaningful emotional impact everyday items and interactions can have. The extraordinary and unusual are important too, and form a stark contrast to the poems about the mundane. These poems are not meant to be a final collection, but are a solid base for a book-length manuscript that will expand on the themes, images, and stories contained in this thesis.

Adviser: Kwame Dawes

African Poetry Book Fund-African Poetry Library Manual: How To Manage And Set Up The Library., Lorna M. Dawes, Charlene Maxey-Harris

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The African Poetry Library Initiative, an initiative of the African

Poetry Book Fund, is a collaborative venture to establish

accessible and user-friendly small poetry libraries on the African

continent to support aspiring and established poets and to give

them access to contemporary poetry in books and journals, and

to serve as a resource for poets interested in publication in Africa

and around the world. The initiative will be guided by

collaboration between US and UK publishers of poetry, literary

arts organizations, poet’s libraries and literary journals and

African libraries, writers co-ops or cultural centers, and poets and

will be coordinated …

Keep Going, Jeff Lacey

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Keep Going is a collection of poetry whose themes include life in modern America, man’s relationship with the natural world, and living in the Midwest. The collection includes both free verse and metric poetry and both narrative and lyric poetry.

Prairie Suite: A Celebration, Twyla Hansen, Paul A. Johnsgard

Paul Johnsgard Collection

25 poems by Twyla Hansen, with illustrations by Paul A. Johnsgard, including:

Walk on the Prairie

There is mystery here, in the shapes of grass,
in the dim movements of an inland sea,
connections to an earlier time. Wander barefoot,
hypothesize the dance of millennia, the unbearable
carvings of the built environment, this ragtag escape.

Let its divine simplicity ooze into your pores.
Comb the steel from your hair, blanket your
tongue with orange. Your breathing will slow.
Breathing slow, unbutton the child within.
Give her permission to go fly a kite.

In Our Very Bones: Poems By Twyla Hansen, Twyla Hansen

Nebraskiana Publications

DISTANCES

1 Midwestern Autumn, 2 Going to the Graves, 3 Memorial Day, 4 On the Screen Porch, 5 Gophers, 6 Lilac Tripping, 7 The Separator, 9 Conspiracy, 11 My Neighbor's Daughter Learning To Drive, 12 Platte River State Park, Late January, 13 Spring Equinox, 14 When You Leave, 15 My Husband Snoring, 16 Full Moon, Total Eclipse, 17 My Father's Miniatures, 18 Wind, 20 If My Father Were Still Alive

ON THE PRAIRIE

23 Song of the Pasque Flower, 24 Blue Moon, 25 Crane River, 26 Nine-Mile Prairie, 27 Late May, 29 Prairie Trout, 30 Vines, 31 Building a Bat …

How To Live In The Heartland, Twyla Hansen

Nebraskiana Publications

Foreword by William Kloefkorn -7, How to Live in the Heartland -11, Airing Out -12, Country Girl -13, January Thaw -14, Making Lard -15, Headlines: Hometown Weekly -16, Nuance -17, My Brother Randall Teaches Me to Ride a Bicycle -18, Seamstress -19, Eddie -20, Nine-Mile Prairie, Mid-May -22, The Pine Grove -23, Kissing Cousins -24, Scars -25, Trumpetcreeper Vine -26, 1964 -27, Friday Night at the Plaza -28, After the Farm Sale -30, Highway -31, Night Shift at the Old Hospital, 1968 -32, Fantasy -34, Eyewash -35, Navigating the North Platte from Lingle to Torrington -36, When the Prairie Speaks …