Creative Writing Commons^™

Little Rituals, Bruce Johnson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following stories represent what I have accomplished in my three-and-a-half years in the Master of Fine Arts-Fiction program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They are all realist stories, most of them with a minimalist leaning. Together for the first time, they are more than a mere sum of the writing I've done in my time in the MFA program. They are the stories that, when I read them now, still occasionally delight me. Most of the stories that I wrote as an MFA candidate do not pass this test, and thus are not included here. If there is …

Maps On The Backs Of Our Eyes, Joan Paulette Robinson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A collection of poems related to places in the Mojave Desert and the Las Vegas area or in rural central Michigan. Most poems deal with history and memory and the overlapping nature of experience.

Always Away, Mollie Bergeron

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

At any given time, there are pages of notes and thoughts running through our minds; these have to come out in some way. In order to stay sane, to stay human, I write poems. These poems are interested in breath and space, memory and nostalgia, loss and water. Each of these ideas has its own fit as part of the poem as well as part of life and being alive. Human emotion is varied through these. Observation and perception, turned into poems through the very physical act of putting words onto a page, allow these memories and experiences to live …

Pyramid Of The Sun, James Joseph Brown

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Pyramid of the Sun is a novel which is experimental in structure. It weaves traditional prose with original poems based on Aztec creation myths. The narrative is not strictly linear, but approaches the plot from several angles - past, present, and future - simultaneously. It comes back to its starting point at the end, like a snake devouring its own tail. The novel takes the Aztec and Mayan belief that time is circular and never-ending and reinterprets it in a contemporary, hard-edged setting that touches down at various points across the globe, including Moscow, Seville, Seoul and Las Vegas. Pyramid …

There Are Moments That Hang Suspended, Mark B. Lennon

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project is the culmination of ten years of work in poetry. It was begun in imitation of those who impressed, not only with their fine words and dexterity with language, but also with their clear conviction in their subject material. Reflected in the works of Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, and Adrienne Rich, among others, was evidence of a life lived, in Thoreau's term, deliberately. The writing of poetry seemed to be not simply a means of expression, but a goad to live a life worth examining, and to keep doing so; a progress report for a radical mind.

Politics …

Samsara, Erica Anzalone

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In Samsara, I bring a spiritual-historical lens to art, war, feminism, religion, and the body in extremis. Although the word samsara resonates mostly within the Hindu and Buddhist faiths, meaning literally to wander through the rounds of death and rebirth, my poetics of transience and trauma crosses cultures, including Muslim, Christian, and Judaic notions of spirituality. Bosnia, Iowa, Boston, and Prague are all shifting sands within the mandala-like hourglass of this collection. My voice often issues from a working class register and speaks with rebellious power from a place of powerlessness: "E-bay nirvana, you want me to yes sir/I'll get …

Due Partly To Inertia, Justin Lee Irizarry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the preface to Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman said, "The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit." My poetry aims to exist in Whitman's `kosmos' and in doing so advance through the turmoil and the strategies of certainty to something resembling principles. Politics is a common theme; it is not in an attempt to write political poetry, but an attempt to not leave anything out. Other themes throughout this manuscript include death, music, wanting, having, …

Strange Little Vehicles, Andrew Merecicky

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

It isn't an exploration in or an experiment regarding. It is a praxis, as a commute is the opposite of an adventure. As le chat regarde le poisson. As when one looks at anything, it becomes strange. That is, a thing (a thought, a feeling, Gertrude Stein's "piece of coffee") once considered becomes little and different. It is the world that is large and alike. It is ultimately the similarity, the recognition of which we, who feel small and unique in the grand scheme, find terrifying. Language is always, as Lyn Hejinian wrote, social; it is a vehicle.

As I …

In What Array That They They Were In And Participating Godlike Food, Thomas Jackson Wills

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I am submitting two manuscripts for my creative dissertation, In What Array That They Were In and Participating Godlike Food. The former is a sequence of odes followed by a brief epic, followed by a cycle of verse dramas, with an ode epilogue. The latter is a book-length excerpt from an epic poem/crime novel/Menippean satire/television show/Dada collage/historical document/vatic investigation that comes in 20 page sections that are supposed to approximate the 42 minutes of an average crime show.

Word~River Literary Review (2013), Ross Talarico, Anne Stark, Susan Evans, Gary Pullman, Andrew Madigan, Christin Taylor, Jerome Melancon, Jennie Evenson, Judith Mansour, Mary Didomenico, Annie Lampman, Maureen Foster, M. V. Montgomery, Rowan Johnson, James Hanley, Michael K. Brantley, Brooks P. Rexroat, Deborah Stark, Rachel Rinehart Johnson, Joan Crooks, Jefferson Navicky, Ed Higgins, Mike Bezemek, Leatha Fields-Carey, Maria Winfield

word~river Literary Journal

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction of adjunct, part-time and fulltime instructors teaching under a semester or yearly contract in our universities, colleges, and community colleges worldwide. Graduate student teachers who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program are also eligible.

We’re looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.