Date of Award

5-31-2017

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English/Creative Writing

First Advisor

Jill McDonough

Second Advisor

Lloyd Schwartz

Third Advisor

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Abstract

Utopians in Love is a collection of poetry in progress. The poems presented in this collection are built around research focused on 19th century American utopian colonies. This research was used to write poems that employ found text, experiment with traditional forms, and generate persona poems. The poems specifically engaging with the utopians of American history are contrasted with contemporary poems that explore visiting the physical locations of these utopias, the concept of utopia, and reimagining the world after a relationship ends. By contrasting the historical and the contemporary, these poems hope to interrogate how the American utopian movement can reflect our contemporary condition. In particular, these utopian colonies had a mixture of progressive and traditional views on sex and romantic relationships. The poems in this thesis aim to explore the utopian communities of American history with a nonjudgmental eye in hopes of finding healing in the present moment.

Comments

Free and open access to this Campus Access Thesis is made available to the UMass Boston community by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this thesis through resources like Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global or through Interlibrary Loan. If you have a UMass Boston campus username and password and would like to download this work from off-campus, click on the "Off-Campus UMass Boston Users" link above.

Download
Off-Campus UMass Boston Users

Share

COinS