Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

6497

Date

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Major

Creative Writing

Concentration

Literature

Committee Chair

Marcus Wicker

Committee Member

Alice Bolin

Committee Member

Donal Harris

Abstract

Common Beasts: A Collection & Other Poems consists of a three part diachronic sequence of poems, tracing the history of a small stone. The stone is first discovered by a teenage girl in the aftermath of her mother's burning at the stake for witchcraft; she believes it to be her dead mother's eye, which carries protective power. In the second section of the collection, the stone has been procured by a white male poetry professor who uses the stone as a crutch to support his fragile sense of self; a young female student of his comes to live with him, and eventually steals the eye. The third section of the collection takes place in a future matriarchal cultural, where the stone is called a "tooth." The collection plays with notions of power and place, attempting to prompt questions about the generative power and pitfalls of misunderstandings, laid bare by our attempts at genuine connection.

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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