Date of Award

6-2011

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English/Creative Writing

First Advisor

Joyce Peseroff

Second Advisor

Lloyd Schwartz

Third Advisor

Suji Kwock Kim

Abstract

The following poems, at the most fundamental level, roll in the mud of what it means to be human. They splash in the domestic and align themselves with natural history by pinning down individual moments for examination. Structured around excerpts from The Aberdeen Bestiary, a medieval natural history manuscript which provides moral lessons based on observations of animals, most of these poems explore our desire to be, at once, social and solitary creatures, and question our relationships with nature. Using language to classify and organize the world in time and space, I attempt to reveal the fleetingness and inconsistency of the abstract. To compensate for the intangible, I peel back the sod and sift through soil, hoping to unearth the beauty of being. Sit with me in my sandbox and feel the dirt beneath your nails. We won't wash them until the streetlights snap on.

Comments

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