Date of Award

5-2020

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English/Creative Writing

First Advisor

Jill McDonough

Second Advisor

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Third Advisor

Lloyd Schwartz

Abstract

These poems are arranged in such a way that they lean toward domesticity, partnership, love. I seek to concretize those abstractions, to write through images that were available to me in my life; things that I saw with my eyes. And because of who I am and how those topics manifest in my life, these poems are queer and nonbinary. The early poems show the reader how to read “they” pronouns. As the manuscript progresses, “they” pronouns become more spread out and less intentional as I move on to center the images and reality of these inherently queer experiences. I have a set of fictional prose poems that thread through the thesis. The fiction poems start out as several stanzas, almost a page long and dwindle as the thesis progresses so that the last few prose poems are only a few lines long. Altogether, those poems tell a tragic and genderless love story between the speaker and Francéis. This story doesn’t make any overt mentions of gender, including gendered possessive pronouns like “he,” “she,” or “they,” which made for a restrictive writing process. This manuscript oscillates between the fictional world of imaginary tragic romance and the world that I actually live in.

Comments

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