Award Date
5-1-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
First Committee Member
Claudia Keelan
Second Committee Member
Donald Revell
Third Committee Member
Emily Setina
Fourth Committee Member
Michael Pravica
Number of Pages
53
Abstract
The legacies of traumatic events are often still present in the locations of those events, even when many years have passed since the original trauma. The poems in Water From the Rain-Gauge operate in a mnemonic and contemporary space which confronts these legacies. Written in the present, in full view of the past, they seek to reconstitute a child’s memories of such events and, with an adult’s empathy and compassion, reconstruct and reckon with the emotionally- and politically-charged memories inevitably accumulated during maturation. They thus focus on such occasions as the legacy of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898; a local case of arson, the arsonist’s flight, and his death by police action; a lifelong agnosticism and its contrast with the obvious beauty and power of religious iconography; the simple beauty of family and garden surrounding a childhood home.
Keywords
American poetry; Memory; North Carolina; Poetry; Psychic trauma in literature
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts
File Format
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Ely, Austin, "Water From the Rain Gauge" (2015). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2348.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/7645883
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/