Poetry Commons^™

Literature Review Sonnet, Chelsea A. Lenoble

Night Flight: Online Literary Journal

This poem is a sonnet that is modeled after Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" and demonstrates appreciation for the literature review stage of the research process.

Wish In One Hand, Amber John

English Honors Theses

In confessional genre-blending poems, prose, and poetic essays, Wish in One Hand probes the reality of living in liminal spaces, and how that reality changes perceptions of identity and the home. Crossing three physical spaces that separate the works, the idea of home is shown to be fluid and multifaceted, frequently interweaving with ideas of childhood, memory, and the passage of time. From meditations on mice in the walls to visceral descriptions of swamp creatures, Wish in One Hand reflects the personal struggle to reconcile liminality with the concrete nature of our worldly experiences.

Of Motherhood, Caldo Y Atole, Amanda R. Garcia

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

"Of Motherhood, caldo y atole" explores the complexity of motherhood in relation to the vivid scenery, culture, and food of New Mexico.

Love Bug Bite, Macklin Luke

Diamond Line Undergraduate Literary Magazine

Macklin is a sophomore gearing towards an interdisciplinary degree, with focus in Chinese, film, and creative writing. She enjoys reading and writing poetry, and her favorite poet is Charles Bukowski. In her free time, she likes to practice writing, pet her cat, Chichi, and watch too many animated movies.

Satori 2021, Caitlyn Salinas, Jacelyn Schley, Megan Haldorson, Carly Weber, Megan Martin, Amanda Gade, Shannon Laurance, Miranda Templeton, Ryanne Mikunda, Jay Lee, Emily Venné, Cheyenne Halberg, David Som, Xandra Okori

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 2021 editors are Andrew Sitter, Cheyenne Halberg, Kaela Appicelli, Meghan Haldorson, and Xandra Okori. The Satori 2021 faculty advisor is Dr. Delta Eddy, Professor of English.

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.

Castle Building: Contemporary Poetry And Flash Fiction From Appalachia, Sharolyn Shae Johnson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Appalachian writing brings a voice to the region that is often obstructed or excluded by popular culture throughout the United States. Crowded with stereotypes, many stories of Appalachian culture are misconstrued or never heard at all. This makes the work of modern Appalachian writers especially significant. Perhaps one of the best ways to reach a broader audience of people in this fast-paced digital time is through shorter writings, and in this thesis I will be presenting my process of writing modern flash fiction and poetry and of sharing the truths of working class, Appalachian people.

A Collection For A Better Misunderstanding, Mark Smeltzer

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

What if being understood becomes even more dreadful than being isolated? This collection of poetry stands between two extremes, using form and language to reflect the struggle of living on a continuum between being understood and being alone. By echoing the direct style of poets like Charles Bukowski and Mark Strand, as well as more abstract figures like May Swenson and Sylvia Plath, this collection asserts that the contradictions we carry can coexist, and even complement one another. Part One features original poetry that relies on the senses to recover old memories. A direct style in Part One seeks to …

Skateboard Jesus, Kenley Alligood

All NMU Master's Theses

Skateboard Jesus is a collection of poetry written in mostly first and second person free verse, containing in addition some prose poems and other forms harder to categorize. The poetry in this collection is largely narrative in structure, and engages with themes of identity and performance as objects of its larger concern, often filtered through the lens of music. In addition, my work often focuses on religion, mental health, and gender and sexuality. This collection, by the very nature of its concerns, engages in discussions of performance theory. Performance and narrative are inseparable entities, permeating every facet of our existence …

Word Into Idea: A Creative Writing Exercise, Stephen Fried

Open Educational Resources

This activity begins from an aleatory technique that creates a list of 104 associatively generated words to provide each participant with a field from which they improvise, first a free-form poem using twenty of the words and then an experimental prose piece that uses all 104 words. The poem is written as a workshop activity and optionally shared in a “poetry slam” segment, following which the prose piece is done as a home assignment. The activity takes 90-120 minutes. A version for synchronous online application is in development.

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 …

Already An Archaeobotany, Sydney Britsch

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Steven Universe once sang, “I learned to stay true to myself/ by watching myself die.” This is precisely the natural journey we must all embark upon in this life; our self continually returning, remembering that which we can trust our bodies have known all along: we are not actually separate from this thing we’ve called nature. This ever-opening landscape necessitates fluidity and the recognition of other modes of knowledge and connection, sometimes only sound or space as our guide. A place where self-healing and self-sacrifice is simultaneously enacted. Each of these moments reverberates and affects the universal voice. The earth …

Mineral Rites, Emma Van Dyke

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of original poems written between Fall 2017 and Spring 2021.

Young Adult: A Poetic Exploration Of Modern American Life, Ellie Bixler

Honors Theses

Adrienne Rich, in her 1993 essay “Someone Is Writing a Poem,” writes “In a political culture of managed spectacles and passive spectators, poetry appears as a rift, a peculiar lapse, in the prevailing mode.” In this collection, I make my own attempt to part with the prevailing mode. I use my poetry as a means of engaging and contending with the American socio-political dialogue that often feels both deeply pervasive and largely inaccessible. Grounded in the thematic conventions of political and ecological poetry, this collection is an exploration of what it means and how it feels to come of age …

American Sissy: Original Poetry, Jonah Stokes

Honors Theses

The creative art of poetry is a complex form, yet the fundamental aspect of the poetic form is of experience. The experience of the poet as well as the experience of the reader reading a poem is what is defined as the crucial element of poetry in this creative endeavor. This study analyzes works of contemporary poets who successfully portray the art of experience in their work. Looking at Romantic and marginalized poets, this study seeks to understand the complexity of poetic experience. The introduction is followed by a series of poem's that emphasize the experience of the author.

The Correlation Between Traditional And Modern Day Performance Poetry: Where Music And Poetry Collide, Jaya Hodges

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

"Music and poetry have similar roots that have made them both into what they are today. From chants to church hymns, they both have kept the Black community intact during times of sorrow and grief. The words that ride along the rhythm and structure of any song brings an unforgettable emotion out of these art forms. This paper will discuss how they have merged themselves together along with the influences they have made within Jame Weldon's "Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing" and Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)".

Taunggyi Dreamer: Exiles, Diasporas, And Pleasures, Singh Kaur Singh

All NMU Master's Theses

Taunggyi Dreamer: Exiles, Diasporas, and Pleasures, a collection of poetry and prose (creative non-fiction and fiction), reflecting themes of trauma, memory, psychic fragmentation and survival is told through hybrid narratives. The writing arises from my own multiple migrations from Taunggyi, Burma, to India and eventually to the United States of America. Taunggyi Dreamer is inspired by: my exile from my birth country, Burma, after the military coup of 1962; my resettlement as a stateless citizen in my ancestral home in India during my teen years; and my arrival to the United States of America in my thirties as a …

The Sound A Body Makes : And Other Ruminations On Navigating Roadkill, Olivia Kingery

All NMU Master's Theses

Using poetry, creative non-fiction, and watercolor paintings, this thesis interrogates my personal relationship with roadkill, as well as society’s relationship with roadkill. The lens of the collection is hyper-focused on roads, the treatment / beliefs surrounding roadkill, and the treatment of more-than-human bodies. Combining image and text, the reader is immersed in a unique conversation about our environment. The Sound a Body Makes utilizes a variety of poetic forms, as well as essay forms. Altogether, the collection is a call to action for radical change regarding how society views and treats more-than-human bodies.

Heavy Is The Head, Elizabeth Wiles

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

"Heavy is the Head: how my mental illness made me a writer" is a collection of poetry about a journey in and through mental illness. It engages the social action issue of mental health awareness. "Heavy is the Head" tells a story of mental illness, how it was accepted, how it was used to improve, and how it can pave the road to self-acceptance.

Love Paint And Other Private Vegetables, Victoria Hudson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite her remarkably low score on the Morse Fall Scale, Dolores shattered her femur in August of 2018. Some studies suggest that grief began there: a fracture, a wail—but the mechanism by which we came to recognize it, to plant it in our beds, remained unexplained, and the role of the daughter was controversial. Who gardens? What is the optimal depth for this sort of burial? Rootbound women with a clinical presentation of imminent loss were eligible to participate; we had thought to control the study but found no suitable placebo. The vegetables were necessarily randomized, the paint stratified according …

The First Flowers Of Spring, Gretel Valdes

Senior Theses

This creative writing thesis contains a series of poems by Gretel Valdes.

I.

• Pillowtalk
• Autumnal Hues
• Mis Cejas
• Intimacy
• Without You, in San Francisco
• Sundown of Person

II.

• drinking honey with the bees
• The Lady of Crescent Lake
• A Collection of 2 am Thoughts
• Cold Feet
• Another Year of Thankfulness
• My Grandfather’s First Time in the ICU
• For Oregon Where I Have Yet to Fall in Love

III.

• The First Flower of Spring
• A Dandelion Before the Wind
• Weightless
• Aubade to the Other Woman
• To Denica
• Someday Soon

IV.

• Recovery
• Anxiety
• On the first girl I ever kissed
• Drinks I …

Properly Unhinged: A Collection Of Poems, Madison Everett

Honors Projects

This is a collection of poems that explores the identities I possess and am a part of. These identities include being half black and half white, clinically diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Generalize Anxiety Disorder, pansexual or bisexual or something altogether different (depending on the day), and cis gendered womanhood. I also explore what a poem is and what a poem is not, and how there is very little difference between the two. In a lot of ways, this is an exploration into myself and what it means to be within the world. What does it mean to …

Metamorphosis: An Exploration Of Transformation In Artmaking, Scarlet Sevits

Honors Projects

My creative project begins with wanting to know how the art making process relates to the process of metamorphosis and the extent to which this process can achieve realism. To explore this question, I chose related subject matter that is the female mythological figures of Ovid’s epic poem Metamorphoses who undergo transformation of the human body. I also chose a methodology that relates to my question. The acts of painting and writing can be explored as processes of transformation and both processes attempt to convince the viewer or reader of reality: the reality of a living figure or the emotional …

00. Campus Poetry Walk 2021 Brochure & Map, Holy Cross Libraries

Campus Poetry Walk 2021

This brochure describes a poetry walk installed throughout the campus at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. It includes a map indicating the location, title and author of each poem along the route.

A virtual version of the poetry walk can be found at crossworks.holycross.edu/poetry2021

Mother/God, Sarah Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My collection, Mother/God, attempts to look at my own growing up and how it has affected my beliefs and self in the presence, while also looking at the choices my mother made in raising me. The central thread throughout the collection is my relationship with my mother and the love that's endured those hardships. It explores my mother's past up until the hardest parts of motherhood in section one, The Mother. Then, section two titled The Daughter focuses on my own rebellion of how I was raised and an exploration of existentialism that was, in a lot of ways, …

Poetry Beyond The Page: A Case For Spoken Word Poetry In Florida's Secondary Classrooms, Sarah Matherly

Senior Honors Theses

Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards, Florida’s most recent K-12 educational standards to promote literacy, lack the rising art of Spoken Word Poetry. However, Florida’s Department of Education should integrate Spoken Word into Florida’s Secondary curriculum. Spoken Word Poetry, by its definition, holds researched benefits that align with the B.E.S.T. Standard’s poetry recommendations and literacy-centered goals. In light of such benefits, Florida’s Department of Education should consider various Spoken Word poets and poems to include in Florida’s Secondary Curriculum, as well as explore the resources and integration methods included in this thesis for both teachers and students.

The Lantern, 2020-2021, Adam Mlodzinski, Julian Barocas, Liam Worcheck, Sarah Buck, Jenna Lozzi, Samuel Ernst, Aurora Mckee, Jessica Schnur, Griffin Banks, Ryan Savage, Gabby Demelfi, Marie Sykes, Kayla Weil, Benjamin Tobias, Anastasia Dziekan, Emily Bradigan, Nadia El-Mourli, Isabelle Wessman, Mairead Mcdermott, Chandrasekhar Palepu, Robert Fisher, Kelsey Gavin, Kathleen Saddler, Liam Powers, Matthew Schmitz, Shayna Kushner, Yakira M. Serrano Rodriguez, Haley Bestrycki, Anaya Demota, Amy Litofsky, Vanessa Worley, Amanda Webber, Morgan Mason, Christian Ndaye, Leo Cox, Olivia Cross, Amy Smith, Valerie Eicher, Ian Abrahams, Amelia Kunko, Ava Compagnoni, Rimsha Maryam, Aviva Schuch, Cyn Ercole, Colleen Murphy, Sarah Fales, Ella Spencer

The Lantern Literary Magazines, 1933 to Present

One Thousand and One is Never Enough • House on Hazel Ave. • Crooked Men at Crooked Alley • Home • Honeybee • The Witch's Daughter • Traveling to Reyu • December 31st, 2019 • The Dominator Rolls the Dice Again • Red Flowers • Military Ball • Drowning in Color • Early Bird • Introspection • Hot Water • Reaching Into Space • Floating Marigolds Before COVID-19 • Smokestack 4 • Longing • His Fifth Year on Amstel Road • Wonderful Moments • Clean Glass • Betty, the Debutante • Teakettles Have it Easy • Fuimos, Somos y Seramos …

For [Redacted], Lalini Shanela Ranaraja

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

This poem was written following the attempts of a close friend and myself to create awareness for the ongoing genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia in particular, and in reaction to activism in the age of social media in general. The digital age and related phenomena, such as hashtag activism and cancel culture, has enabled certain social justice movements to gain rapid traction while other equally worthy movements struggle to find a foothold. Simultaneously, standards of accountability and ethics continue to decline among global news media, with non-Western countries such as Ethiopia and my own home country of Sri Lanka bearing the …

On The Rocks, Michael Grassetti

Bryant Literary Review

Upon a scoured stone, painted in soil

a bear scouts the raging river below.

Rites, Sanjana Aiyar

Bryant Literary Review

Present turns to past,

When tenses change with