Poetry Commons^™

Naturally: Memory In Verse, Heather L. Drouse

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of free verse poetry that I have written that share a common theme of nature and family. This is a creative work that explores my personal memories and the feelings associated with them with the intention to spread joy and cause readers to reflect upon similar experiences they might have had as children. It consists of four major sections -- mother, father, love, and bridges -- and 18 poems, with "love" having 7 minor sections.

Queer Ecologies: A Final Syllabus/Zine Product Of Our Independent Study, Yeh Seo Jung, Ray Craig

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This zine is the product of our independent study course Queer Ecologies, which is an exploration of bio-social systems using a queer and feminist theoretical lens. We aim to look critically at knowledge formation and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable relationships between science, nature, and ourselves. While queer theory most directly interrogates the normative structure of heterosexuality both in humans and in biology more broadly, these studies include analyses of hierarchy, power, and value. Queer Ecology can be used to examine phenomena such as climate change, extinction, pollution, species hierarchies, agricultural practices, resource extraction, and human population …

I Have News To Tell You, Jeanne M. Allison

Theses

I Have News To Tell You is a poetry collection that reckons with grief, survival, and mortality through the exploration of harrowing life experiences and contemplation through nature and relationships. The collection contends with what it means to be a human shaped by scars.

After "The Auroras Of Autumn", Daniel Schwartz

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

I originally set out to write a ‘poetical translation’ of Ecclesiastes. “Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” I wanted to capture the unwavering self-possession of one in the grip of a thoroughly abstract disgust with life. A disgust without bitterness or resentment, measured and controlled, a studied disgust, so languorous as to verge almost on supreme pleasure, pleasure unhaunted by thought. I soon abandoned this idea and decided instead to ‘translate’ Wallace Stevens’ “The Auroras of Autumn” into a language—a symbolic …

Andonia Gountanis' Poems, Andonia Gountanis

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Hello! My name is Andonia Gountanis, I am a junior and a neuroscience major at Binghamton University. My studies mostly consist of heavy-loaded-science courses. I enjoy writing in my free time! This gives me a little diversity in what I do, and gives me a break from all the heavy science material I learn in a day!

Other Orchards, Sam B. Robison

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Other Orchards is comprised of poems each suspect in their own way of those boundaries that might separate humans from nature, rural from urban, worker from scholar, or human from beast. Using the figure of the orchard, a kind of “false forest,” this collection studies the ways we map ourselves onto our work and the way work might inform an understanding of the self. Ultimately, these are poems that emerge from the seams of things—the shoulder of highway strewn with dead antelope, the feral apple tree lost to the woods, the farmer lost in their work, slowing becoming less and …

Religion, Reason And Reconciliation In Louise Gluck’S The Wild Iris, Vincent Sergiacomi

Capstone Showcase

In a world where reason is king, what is the role of faith? Louise Gluck does not claim to have an answer, but she does explore the question. The Wild Iris gives us a god who is utterly convinced of the singular appeal of faith, countered by a worshipper who finds their rational worldview too reasonable to abandon. Yet over the course of the text, neither is able to demonstrate the singular primacy of their point, both arguments leaving their arguers unsatisfied in one way or another. This paper will explore the debate between the human and divine speakers of …

Never Have I Ever Felt So Alive As This, Aria Watson

The Tuxedo Archives

No abstract provided.

Go Down To The Water, Aria Watson

The Tuxedo Archives

No abstract provided.

Portrait Of Rich County, Adrian Thomson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Portrait of Rich County presents the small town of Randolph, Utah in poems describing its wildlife, recreational activities, and the perspectives of citizens in the contemporary rocky mountain west. Special attention to the imagination of the poems’ speaker toward the more dreamlike qualities of Rich County establishes itself throughout, in order to convey a feeling of hope within harsh terrain. This collection examines the theme of salvaging items not often considered, such as rusted junk, ancient houses, or roadside garbage, both in the actions of the speaker and through the act of naming these items upon the page. An over-arching …

Lost And Found, Matthew C. Bronson

The Tuxedo Archives

No abstract provided.

Bycatch, Terin Weinberg

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

BYCATCH

by

Terin Weinberg

Florida International University, 2021

Miami, Florida

Professor Denise Duhamel, Major Professor

BYCATCH is a collection of poems that explore the speaker’s relationship with the natural world. The poems utilize a variety of forms, from traditional sestinas and sonnets driven by image, to puzzle-pieced stereoscopes that can be read grammatically in three different ways—left to right, or down one of either columns. Though the collection is rooted in nature, the emotional drive is rooted in the construction and deconstruction of the family and the body. Each section of the book will function as …

Debating Birds Upend The Hierarchy Of Nature In The Owl And The Nightingale And The Parliament Of Fowls, Caragh Vasko

Masters Essays

No abstract provided.

A Small Bird Sings For Miles, Sophie M. Gregory

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Topics Of The Sky: Ashbery's Involving Search For The Poem, Tom M. Carlson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

An essay lived by John Ashbery's Three Poems with special attention to the possibility of cosmic relevance. This paper attempts to imagine priorities and needs proper to celestial bodies. Three Poems is the consciousness that gives possibility to the text, while Blanchot, Nietzsche, and other thinkers ground its exploration in philosophical analysis.

Lost Or Found, Michael Jorgensen

TYGR: Student Art and Literary Magazine 2018-present

A poem dealing with one's place in the world, in society, and in time. A search for identity, meaning, and supreme truth.

At The Military Cemetery, Leath Tonino

The Goose

Poetry by Leath Tonino.

Snowstorm In Southern Tlön, Joshua T. Parks

The Hilltop Review

This is a wintry poem inspired by the nounless language of Jorge Luis Borges's fictional planet Tlön. It describes a snowstorm using only verbal forms and function words. It also hints at the timelessness of Tlön's philosophical idealism and the tendency of nature to disregard human boundaries.

All That Anyone Could Be, Olivia Moskot

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

No abstract provided.

Cicadas & Other Hauntings, Miriam J. Anastasi

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

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

Sugarcane Crossroads, Sean Carrero

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The following manuscript is a collection of lyric poetry that touches on themes of family history, love, and labor in the service industry. It is divided into three sections. The speaker in the work dwells in mostly private spaces and deals with private symbols such as, water, to represent the father figure in the poems.

This To Which We've Come., Holly Tabor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collection of works explores the linkages between moments, the connective thread that accumulates over time to create for each of us a unique present. The title, “This to Which We’ve Come,” attempts to convey that each moment is a point of arrival colored by the smallest of temporal fibers, our most interior histories that stretch and bend and fold back onto themselves when the present forces us into action, or inaction. Through these characters and their stories, I attempt to examine that moment of arrival. A secondary thread explored in this collection is the idea that humans are still …

Nature's Paths, Chloe Switzer

Senior Theses

This creative writing thesis contains a lyric essay, short story, and poetry by Chloe Switzer.

• Love of Place
• Lost in Venice
• The Willow's

The Stars Above Us, Michael Jorgensen

TYGR: Student Art and Literary Magazine 2018-present

A poem focused on the beauty of nature and how our current society/culture is more focused on our technology, our belongings, and ourselves more than God and His creation.

Bramble And Knife, Sara Ryan

All NMU Master's Theses

This thesis is a collection of poems that center on the themes of extinction, family, the female body, and the presence of the animal. During my time in the Upper Peninsula, I found a connection with the natural world around me, and this led to my fascination with animals and extinction, both of which manifested in my poetry. As I struggled with the residual effects of toxic relationships, as well as the bleak romantic landscape of the UP, I saw my own body reflected in the bodies of animals. I specifically noticed this reflection while studying the art of taxidermy; …

Some Poems, Haley Drake

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

This poetic anthology represents a collection of works which examine the duality of nature and industrialism, and how they coexist in modern society. It also communicates the idea that we -- as a collective human race -- should listen to the metaphorical “voices” of the natural world and pay regard to the needs of the Earth we inhabit. The anthology borrows stylistically and thematically from works of Japanese modernists Sagawa Chika and Hirato Renkichi, who particularly identify with and inspire the message of this anthology in that, while the Western tradition often suggests that nature and the urban are diametrically …

Juneau: Notes From The Bus, Cara Makuh

Senior Theses

This creative writing project is about a week I spent alone in Juneau, Alaska. All time and travel was spent on foot, bus and boat. Alone, I had many different experiences, and every time I interacted with a new person, that isolation became a shared experience, if even for a minute. Each day started out a blank slate, and eventually wrote itself into a story with a unique identity of its own as each day does as we travel through seconds and minutes that build up into completed days. Social interactions with so many different people turns them from strangers …

Damar On Fridays, Maja Sadikovic

Theses

Abstract

These poems are about the first hand witnessing of the Balkan war and its visceral repercussions, ripping of families across generations and continents due to religious intolerance, and an identity crisis within the diaspora of the former Yugoslav people. They interact with appeals of loss, in terms of bodies, memory, and material, despair within the identity of the self in and outside of religion, and the perception of love and belonging, but not necessarily in that order. They are largely inspired by victim story-telling, translations of conversations with natives of the former Yugoslavia and their children, and ramifications of …

Niche By Basma Kavanagh, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Basma Kavanagh's Niche.