Poetry Commons^™

Covid-19 Isolation: Daily Lessons, Joseph S. Pizzo

New Jersey English Journal

COVID-19 continually disrupts classroom structure, design, and the lessons being taught. A return to in-person, on-site classrooms is being challenged again by new variants and people’s desire to gather during holidays. Our goal as caring educators is to “educate rather than separate” as we “continue / To humanize / Our study / Of humanities.”

Professional Development, John Chorazy

New Jersey English Journal

Written from the perspective of a teacher, this poem reflects on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Digital Pastoral, Rebecca Holifield

Master's Theses

Digital Pastoral is a collection of original poems and a creative nonfiction essay, accompanied by a critical introduction.

Chronic Poetics: A Waiting Room Of One's Own, Madeleine Simmons

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This article explores chronic poetics, through my personal lens I take readers on a walk- through of poetry and the discussions surrounding chronic illnesses. I examine the current state of chronic illness and the nuances to its discussion. I analyze chronic illness in the context of disability studies, and touch on the tensions of categorizing chronic illness as a disability. As well as how to best navigate reading chronic poetics, as poets engage in new territories as they form a new language to describe their circumstances. While analyzing multiple poems from different authors, I explore why specifically the vessel of …

3 Selections From "Upon The Body: Poems Of/To A Black Social Epi, Pt.Ii--Love//Resistance In The Time Of Covid", R. J. Petteway

Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism

The 3 poems included here are from a collection written between January and August 2020. The full collection—27 poems total—examines intersections of structural racism, racialized police violence, and COVID-19, drawing from generations of creative resistance produced and embodied by Black artists, activists, and scholars like Nina Simone, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Audre Lorde, Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, and W.E.B. DuBois. The collection as a whole is crafted as counternarrative to public health’s ahistoric, apolitical, racist, and homophobic proclivities in times of crisis. The 3 poems here are from Part II, "LOVE//Resistance in the Time of COVID.” These selections …

Sumi-E? Haiku? Why Not Both!, Sara Anne Hook

Graduate Scholarship and Professional Work

No abstract provided.

Chrysalis, Nafisa Choudhury

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

This poem explores the experience of being an Asian American care provider and civilian, growing up and trying to mesh together culture with “fitting in” and suffering racism from other individuals and patients. It was inspired by the March 16, 2022, shootings in Atlanta and discusses the origin of hatred and racism/xenophobia. What I hope this conveys is a glimpse into the shared perspectives of many Asian American and Pacific Islanders and describes the optimism moving forward as we begin to tackle these issues.

Small Talk Haiku - Temur, Turan Temur

Student Work

Library Literary Contest Spring 2022: “Small Talk”

Entrants wrote a haiku that addressed the following prompt: “ You escape small talk with the most unrealistic excuse possible. Write your excuse as a haiku.”

Small Talk Haiku - Boyce, Jaxyn Boyce

Student Work

Library Literary Contest Spring 2022: “Small Talk”

Entrants wrote a haiku that addressed the following prompt: “ You escape small talk with the most unrealistic excuse possible. Write your excuse as a haiku.”

Two Poems, Lauren Coyne

The Hilltop Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Trauma And Poetry. The Case Of Primo Levi, Ilona Klein

Faculty Publications

Most North American readers have come to know and appreciate Primo Levi by his major works in prose. His The Periodic Table (1984) catapulted Levi onto the American stage of scientific-humanistic authors, having the New York Times named it among the Best Books of the Year in 1985. Instead, American readers will likely stumble upon Levi’s poetry by accident, simply because every now and then one of his poems in translation appears in print somewhere. Compared to Levi’s prose, his poems inevitably evoke a sense of unease, for their tone, their style and their content are so unlike the familiar, …

Follow The Shimmer, Meghan Bradbury

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Follow the Shimmer is a creative thesis collection of poems and songs that explore the depths of trauma, love, and healing. Told through the lens of fairy tale and fantasy, it is a story of grief and hope. Some of the tales are familiar, others are strange and abstract. Fables and nursery rhymes are remixed by the hands of a daughter who wishes for her deceased mother's touch. Archetypes and mythology are scrambled through the kaleidoscopic eyes of a woman who survives the violence of a patriarchal society. The world becomes a landscape of dangerous yet magical realms to discover; …

A Note To Myself, We’Re Alright: A Poetry Collection As Therapy In The Pandemic Times, Cris Heila M. Ordoñez

DLSU Senior High School Research Congress

A Note To Myself, We’re Alright is a poetry collection inspired by the author’s mood and state of mind. The artwork is composed of different types of poetry that best fits the author’s aesthetic. The poetry collection is intended to help those who are troubled in mind be at ease. The artwork aims to be an aid to people, especially to the youth in this era. The unfamiliar lifestyle that came from the COVID-19 pandemic caused some mental difficulties to us all. The research paper is based on a phenomenological theory which aims to question personal experiences to one self …

Adoration Above Objectification: The Promotion Of Other In Black, Mexican And Arabic Love Poetry, Joycelynn L. Baker

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the philosophical fundamentals of sexual objectification and presents opposing literature, written in the 20th century, by Black, Mexican and Arabic male poets in contrast. In vigorous patriarchal environments that provide more opportunities to practice sexual objectification, the poets reframe male metaphysical perception and behavior in romantic or sexual contexts by promoting the autonomy and agency of women above themselves, and displaying their enjoyment of that situation. This paper will discuss how Western metaphysical philosophy impacts self-perception and belief in contemporary romantic contexts.

[They], Mary Alsobrooks

Poetry MFA Theses

A poetry collection centered around the exploration of identity through the people and places that shaped the poet's childhood.

Proclivities Of The Common Southern Wasp, Paul Bryant

Creative Nonfiction MFA Theses

A hybrid collection of poems and creative nonfiction essays exploring the author's relationship with his father and the American South.

The End Of The Known World, Madeline Thomas

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

This thesis forms the foundation for a poetry chapbook infused with Norse mythology and pain. It builds itself on two distinct strands. In the first, I reclaim the story of Hel, goddess of death, and attempt to humanize a figure historically branded as monstrous. Her life forms a narrative line through the collection that attempts to capture the whimsy and horror in myth. Intertwined with the goddess are poems centered around a contemporary speaker who suffers from chronic migraine, an autoimmune disease, unexplained tachycardia, and OCD. The poems in this personal strand vary heavily in both form and content but …

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.

What We Need: A Poetic Study In Struggle And Self-Healing, Grace Anne Calabria

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In many ways, this thesis examines the eternal, repetitive inevitabilities of life. In a collection of poems, these inevitabilities are examined through the eyes of an observant and omniscient narrator: a girl, long in love with a boy, facing the struggles and rewards of learning to be alone in various ways after the 2020 pandemic. Because this thesis provides an examination of struggles and self-healing alongside its creative centerpiece of the collection, the poems are accompanied by a compilation of memoiristic reflections. This thesis contributes to conversations of mental health, love, growth, and finding legitimacy and value in creative work, …

My Body Is A Question Mark Lit From Within, Lisa Marie Schrad

Graduate Thesis Collection

In her MFA thesis “My Body Is a Question Mark Lit from Within,” Lisa Marie Schrad explores through poetry the body and its different appetites—hunger for justice, for healing, for God, for home, for wonder. Along the way, the poems also make clear that the path toward fullness and satisfaction must inevitably pass through a deep, brave commitment to knowing the full truth about ourselves. When a light shines out from inside the body, what shortcomings are exposed? What goodness is revealed? And how do we live in the world responsibly, kindly, from the space in-between our questions and their …

The Kiss Turns: A Play On Aural Manor, Meredith Higgins

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Kiss Turns: A Play on Aural Manor is a poetic work that explores the nature of being and selfhood as they are expressed and modulated through the hearing, speaking, and writing of language. The Manor and surrounding Grounds here are presented as a fluid junk-mosaic: colorful, clamoring, thing-filled, magical, and on the move. Seven characters reside on the Manor’s property and live out their respective longings and loves, apprehending horror, tragedy, abundance, and the possibility of play through accepting and collaborating with the unknown depths of being.

Horsonnets, Shriram Sivaramakrishnan

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

‘Horsonnets’ was conceived and written between September 2019 and December 2021. As the name suggests, the collection is centered around horses, as objects of desire, metaphor, tropes. The collection is structured into four sections: ‘the way a horse frames blueness’, ‘to nurse a hurt’, ‘horsonnets’ and ‘landscape with horns’. Together, they all address different kinds of pain (horses became emblematic of that): bodily (‘the way a horse frames blueness’), historical (‘to nurse a hurt’), cultural (‘horsonnets’), and spiritual (‘landscape with horns’).

As Above, So Below: Magical Poetics And Queer Alchemy & A Planetary Spell.., Robert Eric Shoemaker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Words have power": no more obvious statement has perhaps ever been made in an essay. However, the nature of that power is quite complicated, with a long and contentious history. I think of poetry as magic. Poetry is magical in the sense that it has ineffable qualities to it that enable readers to experience new thoughts and feelings when experiencing poetry, but when I say magic I mean that I think of poetry as actual, practical magic. As I will argue, poetry has magical qualities to it regardless of who is weaving the words, while intentional use of a self-aware …

Kaboom, Karstin Margaret Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of original poems written between Fall 2018 and Spring 2022.

Disorienting Object Oriented Ontology: Queer Landscapes And Ecological Bodies In Richard Siken And Harryette Mullen., Andrew N. Hutto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on a recent development within the study of metaphysics, known as object oriented ontology (OOO), and works out questions of being alongside contemporary poetry. Recognizing the post anthropocentric purchase afforded by OOO’s claim that everything is an object and that these objects are impossible to correlate with, this thesis will look at the use of objects in Richard Siken’s War of the Foxes and Harryette Mullen’s Recyclopedia. Drawing heavily from Sara Ahmed’s queer theory of disoriented objects and Timothy Morton’s ecological insights, this thesis will argue that despite OOO’s advancement, there are critical gaps to fill in …

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, …

Mosaic: A Lifetime Of Poems, Emma F. Bowen

Honors Projects

In hopes of providing a clearer picture of the aging process and its effects on our personalities, follow this collection of poems through diary-like entries of individuals navigating their lives from daycare, heartbreak, and loneliness. The impact that development can have on our psychological well-being and brains is fascinating and feels familiar. Why do we see the world so differently when we are young? As we grow older, what is so important that makes us shift how we view ourselves and our environment multiple times? It is often seen that each generation shares like-mindedness throughout their lives – why?

Water Trembles: Alternative Experiences Of Poetry, Su Hyun Nam

Frameless

Water Trembles is a poetry game, which will be published along with the forthcoming poetry book, Fast Fire (Carnegie Mellon University Press). This project is developed by the Burnt Orange Game Lab at Syracuse University, led by Su Hyun Nam, Rainie Oet, and Regan Henley, in collaboration with students in the Computer Art and Animation program. In the game, the main character Gertie, who has locked themself in their room after their mother died, solves puzzles by collecting poems about memories of their mother. By progressing the game, Gertie completes the poetry book and also takes themself out to the …

Satori 2022, Abigail Perlinger, Brianna Strohbehn, Elise Modjeski, Gabriel Hathaway, Gabriela Wallberg, Grace Menke, Jennifer Wendt, Kaysey Price, Keaton Riebel, Louisa Shirmacher, Madi Bonebright, Madison Grove, Mckenna Scherer, Page Sutton, Rae Peter, Savannah Egger, Sophia Sailer, Trianna Douglas, Van Herman

Satori Literary Magazine

The Satori is a student literary publication that expresses the artistic spirit of the students of Winona State University. Student poetry, prose, and graphic art are published in the Satori every spring since 1970.

The Satori 2022 editors are Matthew Pearson, Jasmyne Taylor, and Emily Venne. the Satori 2022 faculty advisor is Dr. Jim Armstrong, Professor of English.