American Literature Commons^™

The Unthinkable Botanical Gardens: Poems, Travis Oliver Green Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Unthinkable Botanical Gardens is a book of poems in five sections. The first, third, and fifth sections present a speaker navigating a wondrous and often hostile world. The second and fourth sections are long poems: "Zodiac B," a sequence inspired by obsolete or forgotten constellations, and "Elbow Island," which tells the story of the beluga whales exhibited in Barnum's American Museum.

Buckner, Simon Bolivar, 1823-1914 (Sc 61), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 61. Manuscript poem entitled “The Censer Bowl” written by Simon Bolivar Buckner.

Murrey, Loretta (Martin) (Mss 429), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 429. Interviews conducted by Loretta (Martin) Murrey, professor of English at Western Kentucky University, with poet Joy Bale Boone. Includes transcriptions, summaries, and cassette tapes (32). The interviews emphasize biographical information and descriptions of Boone's influence as a poet and literary activist.

Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943 (Sc 515), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 515. Letter, 17 January 1926, from Cale Young Rice, Louisville, Kentucky, to Mrs. Grayot? giving permission to reprint some of his poetry in the magazine "The Club Woman." Also includes some of his comments concerning poetry.

Western, William Wallace, 1834-1870 (Sc 736), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 736. “Prison Pastime: A Poem,” written by William W. Western, a Memphis, Tennessee Confederate while in Canada during the Civil War. Privately printed, updated, and dedicated to Henry H. Skiles, a lawyer friend of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Includes typescripted letters of Western, written from Canada, discussing his poems and his uncertain future.

“Roses Are Planted Where Thorns Grow”: The 2012 Lion And The Unicorn Award For Excellence In North American Poetry, Michael Heyman, Michael Joseph, Joseph T. Thomas Jr.

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Brooks, Attie Frances (Riggs), 1871-1946 (Sc 2577), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2577. Typescript copies of a few letters from Attie Riggs Brooks, Utica, Kentucky, to Gayle R. Carver, Greenville, Kentucky, enclosing typescript copies of several poems and articles as well as a short biography.

Hays, William Shakespeare, 1837-1907 (Sc 2603), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2603. Chiefly typescript copies of letters from William Shakespeare Hays, Louisville, Kentucky, to Jess and Sue Barkley, Greenville, Kentucky, and a few selected poems. Poems include "Insured", "Sunday Morning", "Eli's Thanksgiving", etc. Also included is general biographical information about Hays.

Averitt, Lewis H., 1812-1872 (Sc 710), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 710. Manuscript book of 30 poems written by Dr. Lewis H. Averitt physician of Caledonia, Trigg County, Kentucky, between 1840-1872. Several of the poems are about the Whig Party in Kentucky, 1842-1843.

Rice, Cale Young, 1872-1943 (Sc 484), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 484. An autographed letter to Mr. Blodgett stating that he never saves his manuscripts, 6 March 1917, and a poem entitled “Silence,” 1 November.

Morton, David, 1886-1957 (Sc 550), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 550. Letter, 19 March 1949, to Marjorie Clagett, Bowling Green, Kentucky, from poet David Morton, Deerfield, Massachusetts, concerning his visit to Western Kentucky State College, Bowling Green. Also, a printed copy of one of his poems as requested. Morton was originally from Elkton, Todd County, Kentucky.

Obenchain, Lida (Calvert), 1856-1935 (Sc 578), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 578. Photocopies of a letter written by Lida (Calvert) Obenchain, author, from Dallas, Texas, to Otto Rothert, author, Louisville, Kentucky, which contains literary and family information; an article written by Mrs. Obenchain and published in McCall’s Magazine; and some biographical notes.

America In Verse: The Laureate Project, Leah Kind, Dan Gleason, Erin Micklo, Margaret T. Cain

Understanding Poetry

The purpose of this project is to allow students to use their (developing) skills of poetic explication and close reading, combined with research and analysis, to discover and establish a solid case for a poet they will nominate as the next American Poet Laureate. Working in groups of 3-4, students will identify a published, living American poet who has not yet been designated a laureate. The project demands a wide array of skills as the students research bibliographic information on the poet: read and analyze the poet’s body of work and select one central poem to represent that poet; amass …

Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914 (Sc 531), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 531. Letter from poet Madison Julius Cawein, Louisville, Kentucky, to Fred H. Day, Boston, Massachusetts, a publisher, relative to several of Cawein’s books of poetry and to a book by novelist and poet Alice Brown.

Love Is Just A Word For The Last Body I'D Like To Keep Vigil Over, Robert Jagger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Love is Just a Word for the Last Body I'd Like to Keep Vigil Over is a collection of poetry that was composed during my time spent at UNLV. Comprised mostly of prose poems, it was heavily influenced by the works of Richard Hugo, Robert Coover, Joshua Marie Wilkinson and several French poets who are often categorized as being members of either the Symbolist or Decadent movement. At its best, the collection attempts to invoke a sense of Joseph Cornell's boxes--odd juxtapositions of everyday items and language that create new and uncertain circumstances. Unlike Cornell's boxes, however, the poems aren't …

About A Yellow Ball, Shannon Alice Salter

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

These are poems made from many things: color, eggs, oranges, many kinds of seeds, leaves, wind, California, the desert, birds. They are things alive in the world and alive in my heart. I cannot take them out of the world, but from my heart I can have whatever appears on its surface. The language of steam.

They are poems that like to be at home.

California is my home and so is the Mojave (and so is every desert). I live in a valley about four hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, in the city of Las Vegas. What better …

Bolton, Joseph Edward, 1961-1990 (Mss 404), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scans of selected folders (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 404. Collected loose poems of Joseph E. Bolton, a native of Cadiz, Kentucky and a Western Kentucky University graduate. Bolton published two books of poetry in his lifetime. A posthumous collection, The Last Nostalgia, was edited by Don Justice and published in 1999. The bulk of the collection relates to Justice’s research notes and correspondence regarding publication of The Last Nostalgia.

Obenchain, Lida (Calvert), 1856-1935 (Sc 284), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 284. Typed manuscript of "A Wind Harp,' a compilation of published and unpublished poems by Eliza Calvert Hall [pseudonym of Lida Calvert Obenchain].

Lola Ridge : Poet And Renegade Modernist, Anna Hueppauff

Theses : Honours

This thesis examines the poetry of Lola Ridge as a form of alternative Modernism. Poet, editor, anarchist, Lola Ridge is largely an unknown identity in Modernist discourses. Primarily recognised as a social justice poet, her work has been viewed through a traditional Modernist lens and excluded to the periphery as ‘sentimental’. This thesis argues that Ridge personally and professionally exceeds these categories. She modelled a practice of engagement in her personal life by actively participating in rallies and protests against injustice, and living in poverty in solidarity with the poor, giving her work an authenticity worth investigating. Her poetry provides …

Brashear, William Helm, 1855-1942 (Mss 14), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 14. Manuscripts of William Helm Brashear's poems, essays, play, and eulogy of Clarence Underwood McElroy. A few letters (6) and many clippings of his published works are included. Also scrapbooks have published poems pasted in them (3). Brashear was from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

“The City, The Country, And The Road Between”: The 2011 Lion And The Unicorn Award For Excellence In North American Poetry, Michael Heyman, Michael Joseph, Joseph T. Thomas Jr.

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Adcock, James Pringle, 1856-1951 (Mss 11), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 11. Originals of poems entitled "Frost-bitten Epigrams" written by James Pringle Adcock of Livingston County, Kentucky during the years 1939-1946. Also correspondence, 1932-1953, related to the collection.

Davis, Anne Pence, 1901-1982 (Mss 373), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 373. Correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, publications and associated material relating to the literary career of Anne Pence Davis, a poet, reviewer, novelist, and author of juvenile fiction who grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky and lived in Wichita Falls, Texas after her marriage.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 1836-1907 (Sc 164), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 164. “Love’s Calendar,” handwritten poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The Atlantic Monthly, of which Aldrich would later become editor, published the poem under the title “Snow” in its March 1866 issue.

Trout, Allan Mitchell, 1903-1972 (Mss 346), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 346. Correspondence and writings relating to the career of Allan Mitchell Trout, political reporter and columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Includes letters from readers, written mostly on the occasion of his retirement, collections of Trout's "Greetings" columns, speeches and articles, historical memorabilia, correspondence relating to the Allan M. Trout Collection at Western Kentucky University, and messages of sympathy to his wife after Trout's death.

How To Get From Here To There: Poetic Connections In Tracy Letts's "Man From Nebraska," "August: Osage County," And "Superior Donuts.", Deborah Ann Kochman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, Kochman examines the textual references to poetry in contemporary playwright Tracy Letts's "Man from Nebraska," "August: Osage County," and "Superior Donuts" and explores how specific references function as a "poetic exchange" between the protagonists and the respective agents of change or moral touchstones in each play and how these "poetic exchanges" suggest a diminishment or elevation of the intrinsic value of art -- specifically, poetry -- as a force for personal and cultural renewal. While Letts's writing is hardly "poetic" and his structure closer to "narrative," he focuses on "the repressed" - both emotionally and socially --and …

Bere, Jenny Rose, D. 1987 (Sc 2371), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2371. "Cale Young Rice[:] A Study of His Life and Work" by Jenny Rose Bere, "a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts," University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, 1939.

Chaney, Thomas Peyton (Sc 2395), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2395. "An Analysis of the Poetry of Robert Penn Warren for Oral Interpretation," a thesis presented "in partial fulfillment of the requirements [for the] degree of Master of Arts," Baylor University, Waco, Texas, 1966.

It's (Not) All Small Stuff: The 2009 Lion And The Unicorn Award For Excellence In North American Poetry, Michael Heyman, Angela Sorby, Joseph T. Thomas Jr.

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Burt, John D., B. 1955 (Mss 325), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 325. Proof copy of a book titled "Democracy and Poetry: Robert Penn Warren and the Fate of Inwardness." (365 p.) This manuscript was adapted and later published as "Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism."