Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

6424

Date

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Major

Creative Writing

Committee Chair

Marcus Wicker

Committee Member

Alice Bolin

Committee Member

Verner Mitchell

Abstract

My thesis manuscript is a collection of narrative, confessional poems entitled Live Anyway. The story my work seeks to tell is one of trauma and the complicated attempts at creating family by one who has tried to love her initial caretakers, lost, struggled with the emotional damage in the wake of that loss and then gone on to love again and again. My poetry explores childhood wounds alongside an adult version of the self who has chosen romantic love as a way to keep faith in family and in humanity. The story is one told with the magical-thinking embedded in an occult-leaning Caribbean culture and with a sensitivity to the natural world. It's also told through the lens of a preoccupation with pop culture consumed in visual art, music, television and classic Hollywood film, and in spite of spirals through anxiety and obsession. Concrete, juxtaposed images and clear dramatic situations provide entryways into themes of desire, disappointment, memory, survival and the relentless will to repeat and recapitulate romantic love and domestic bliss.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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