Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2024

Document Type

Thesis (Access Restricted)

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts

Department

Creative Writing

Committee Chair

Marcus Wicker

Committee Member

Emily Skaja

Committee Member

Mark Mayer

Abstract

Choose Your Own Destruction is a collection of interlinked poems chronicling the last days of (the) US, naming/probing America’s fault lines that will lead to Her inevitable collapse via invective verse & a sustained narrative arc. Despite the setting of post-apocalyptic America, the manuscript’s examination of power, political and religious institutions, as well as family, and the self, keeps a lens fixed on the modern world. Each poem concludes w/ a choice of paths that determines the rest of the narrative. There are dead ends, inescapable loops, false paths, & hidden poems peppered throughout the manuscript, but much like the narrators in CYOD, the reader will inevitably realize that there’s only one way out. As the characters sojourn, rest, pilgrimage, dig in, or die, they offer up conjectures on what all went wrong, & why things never had to end this way. In the end, this book speaks to who we are & why we’re here, frustrated w/ the errors of the past but cynically hopeful for a more human tomorrow.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

No Access

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